Love knot

“ He has known everything before he comes to her, and she has known nothing. She's told that it doesn't matter, that it's right. She doesn't believe it in her heart —the more she loves him, the less she believes it—but she tries to persuade herself she believes it. It's wrong—wrong! To him she's a new girl, and to her he is a new world. How can marriage be the same thing to both. You didn't love her, but you gave yourself to her. Could a husband think less of his wife's sin for a reason like that?"
Kent rose, and stood beside her dumbly. ”

“ She paused a second or more, and then turned toward him, her eyes narrowed in that characteristic style which Kneedrock had described so harshly.
"But it is glorious, all the same," she cried with an odd little soft rapture. "You haven't come to that yet. You've not gone on to where one fights for the mere joy of loving love, in life, as one fights for breath in a suffocating pit. Why shouldn't I love to love? ”

“ With the coming of night I yearn for you, beloved; the flame of my desire burns high and I am unashamed that I desire you as all true women must desire a mate.” She turned and kissed him solemnly and tenderly. “I love you, heart of my heart,” she told him, “and though I live to be as old as Hakataua, I swear, by your God, never shall I love any man but you, Dan Pritchard. And, loving you, I shall respect you and obey you, nor shall I bring dishonor or shame upon you, my husband. ”

“ The knowledge of her own heart does not come to a woman with the easy grace that your sentimentalists make out. It is somewhat of a fierce process, Kent. There is no royal road to it. Well, I know my own heart now, and I have bought the knowledge with agonies of suffering. Oh, Kent, my true, loyal Kent! I am tired, tired of hiding facts from myself, of acting in a wilful dream, in defiance of the promptings of my reason. I am a woman, and I ought not to confess things to myself, let alone to you. So people say—and people are so wise, aren't they? I love you, Kent. ”

“ Dear, I do so love you--
(Knox loses control and starts to rise.) No! Sit there. I was weak. Yet I am not sorry. You are right. We must forego each other. We cannot be thieves, even for love's sake. Yet I am glad that this has happened--that I have lain in your arms and had your lips on mine. The memory of it will be sweet always.
(She draws her cloak around her, and rises.)
(Knox rises.) You are right. The future belongs to the children. There lies duty--yours, and mine in my small way. I am going now. We must not see each other ever again. We must work--and forget. ”

“ Love is my sunshine and is a miraculous creative force. With your frail body, you must draw power from an outside source, Raymond, and what other reservoir is there but Love? Listen, dear, just a moment more,” she cried, tightening her arms about him. “I would rather see you love some other woman than not love at all, for I know that the awakening of your soul would be Canada’s great gain. And now,” she concluded, rising, “will you kiss me before you go?”
Dilling hesitated, and in that instant’s delay a step sounded on the stair and a gentle tattoo beat upon the door. ”

“ Kent saw instantly that the flood-gates of her long-restrained grief were breaking, and he held to his untrue statement with fixed resolve. Looking full in her eyes he echoed her words impressively. "Just that," he said, and then went on, while she lowered her head again and began to cry softly.
"The love that they have given you merits a better return than the mean one you have given, Virgie. You have been cruel to their kindnesses, ugly to their sympathy and hateful to their love. Think! think—not as you have been thinking—of yourself alone, but of them and yourself! ”

“ And even the king of German metaphysicians, old Kant, understood this feminine foible, which may have been the reason why he never found a wife: “An actor,” he says, “who remains unmoved, but possesses a powerful intellect and imagination, may succeed in producing a deeper impression by his feigned emotion than he could by real emotion. One who is truly in love is, in presence of his beloved, confused, awkward, and anything but fascinating. But a clever man who merely plays the rôle of a lover may do it so naturally as to easily ensnare his poor victim ”

“ He knew somehow that she had been no widow when she had married Lord Skene; and, indeed, his next words proved the justice of my surmise.
“Compare our positions,” said he. “Here am I—as I have described. Here are you—started from exactly similar premises—the mistress of all, or nearly all, that your heart could desire—a fortune, a title, an unsullied reputation; the respect of a noble husband, the love of a beautiful child—born in wedlock, too, that holy institution, and destined in the future to regard his mother as the pure fount of honour.” ”

“ The next instant, she leaped from the couch and clasped him in her arms.
There was a long pause of awful silence, in which he stood with head uplifted and his eyes covered with his hands, while she clung to him, her face still between its thick length of waven tresses, and gazed with dilated eyes into his half-hid features.
“My beloved! My own beloved, what is this? Was it a dream? Be calm—be strong. I am with you. I hold you in my arms. No evil thing can come to you when I am near. Love clasps you, my dear and gentle lover, and nothing can harm you.” ”

“ Imbeciles and sensualists “fell in love”, because the world refuses to countenance the cruder, if more honest, passion. Dilling had never been in love—neither with Marjorie nor any other woman. Even now he refused to connect the term with Azalea. He had suddenly become aware of joy in her companionship, of his dependence upon the mental stimulation she provided, of a hitherto unsuspected peace in their spiritual communion. In her, he had found the priceless thing for which men seek throughout their lives—Understanding. ”

“ A prince among men—a nobleman, a genius—a man whom all women—Kenkenes! by Horus, I am amazed! And thou didst endure it, and continue to love and serve and suffer for her! Where is thy pride?"
Kenkenes stopped him with a motion of his hand.
"A maid's unwillingness is obstacle enough," he said. "Shall a man summon further difficulty in the form of his self-esteem to stand in the way of his love? Nay, it could not be, and that thou knowest, my father, since thou, too, hast loved. When a man is in love it is his pride to be long-suffering and humble. ”

“ Kenton broke off, “I talk as if there was nothing to bind her; and yet there is what poor Richard did! What would she say if she knew that? I have been cautioning Lottie and Boyne, but I know it will come out somehow. Do you think it’s wise to keep it from her? Hadn’t we better tell her? Or shall we wait and see—”
Kenton would not allow to her or to himself that his hopes ran with hers; love is not business with a man as it is with a woman; he feels it indecorous and indelicate to count upon it openly, where she thinks it simply a chance of life, to be considered like another. ”

“ She did not, but from that time she watched Kenneth more closely than ever before, and that with the growing conviction that Dale was right.
It became with her an absorbingly interesting subject of thought; her heart was more and more filled with pity for Kenneth's silent suffering, and pity is akin to love.
But what could be the cause of this strange, silent anguish? Was it unrequited love? She spurned the thought. What! he of all men to sue in vain? It could not be! What woman's heart could withstand such a siege? ”

“ As he said this, the dark and lustrous eyes of the Castilian girl filled with half-subdued fire; her lashes drooped, and she heaved a long sigh.
"You speak of love," she said, in a low voice, while her bosom swelled beneath its scarlet corset and the thin muslin habit-shirt that was gathered round her slender throat; "all men are alike to a woman who is not in love; but in my heart I feel an emotion which tells me that if I loved there would be to me but one only in the world—he, my lover!"
Her calm energy, and the deep sudden glance she shot at Quentin, quite bewildered the poor fellow. ”

“ Connacht songs, the lover says: 'Blacker is the sun when setting than your features, Mary!' And she answers back: 'Neither star nor sun shows one-third much light as your shadow!' Another lover says of the woman he desires: 'I will write largely of her, because of the thousands who hoped for her, and who have been lost; and a hundred men of these who still live, are in pain and under locks through love. ”

“ By the time he had twice traversed the long, weary road between Columbia and Newport, Gilbert reached a desperate solution of this difficulty. The end of his meditations was: “I will see if there be love in woman as in man!—love that takes no note of birth or station, but, once having found its mate, is faithful from first to last.” In love, an honest and faithful heart touches the loftiest ideal. Gilbert knew that, were the case reversed, no possible test could shake his steadfast affection, and how else could he measure the quality of hers? ”

“ The little sister that Captain Clendenon had wanted to keep a child forever was a child no longer. Love—the old, old story, old as the world, and yet new and sweet as the blushing [Pg 107] flowers of to-day's blossoming—had opened for her the portals of a broader existence, and Lulu was learning the strength and depth of her woman's heart first by its intense aching.
According to the verdict of the world, it is a woman's shame to love unsought; and yet I think that that is scarcely love which waits to be given leave to love. ”

“ In spite of a hopeless, passionate love Kent was still a happy man.
And now this spell of her influence was broken, or at least modified. He had seen her, felt the softness of her voice, the kindliness of her eyes. And he had unwittingly betrayed his secret. She knew that he loved her. She pitied him, promised that he should see her frequently on the basis of the old friendship. It was kind and generous, he thought, to step down from the height of her wedded felicity to comfort him with her friendship and sympathy. An unexpected happiness was in store for him. ”

“ Iris Vincent had learned all she cared to know.
"Thank you, dear, ever so much, for gratifying my curiosity," she said aloud; but in her own heart she said:
"I knew it—I knew it! Handsome Harry Kendal does not love this girl with whom they have forced him into a betrothal. No wonder he looks sad and melancholy, with a prospect before him of marrying a blind wife! Ah, me! it is too dreadful a fate to even contemplate." ”

“ Thus unwittingly he appealed to the mother sympathy, the strongest a good woman can feel.
They were engaged and the wedding was all that any bride could have desired. Then ten weeks abroad, beautiful, revealing weeks, for Francis Kent, sober and in love, was much of a man. Still it was only ten weeks before the formal social function, with its inevitable array of wines, turned this kindly, genial lover, in an hour, into a coarse, inconsiderate drunkard. ”

“ Take the world by the throat and it will do thy will."
"Again I dispute thee, O Rameses."
"Name thy witness," the prince insisted. Kenkenes leaned on his elbow toward him.
"Canst thou force a woman to love thee?" he asked simply.
Ta-user glanced at the prince and the sleepy black eyes of the heir narrowed.
"Let us get back to the issue," he said. "We spoke of others shaping the future of men. You may not force a woman to love you, but no love or lack of love of a woman should misshape the destiny of any man." ”

“ Her voice was a warm breath in his ear and her arms slid over his chest while she talked.
“You don’t love me, darling. That’s the whole trouble. We love with our minds, and love is an accumulation of a million memories - but you have lost yours. I know, I know. To you...”
“Beth,” he began but she clamped her hand over his mouth.
“To you, darling, I’m a stranger, just another woman. I know I can’t be anything more right now. You’ll have to learn to love me again.
“But me? Nick, it’s different with me. ”

“ She moaned, tearing the sound from the very depths of her as his hands smoothed the satiny texture of her thighs, his fingers working against her flesh. He felt the nails of her hands digging into his shoulders, but he paid no attention to it.
Nothing mattered now. Nothing except the warmth of their love and the expenditure of the raging passions that threatened to engulf them both.
They laid there for a long time, basking in the heat of their love, and he knew. Finally he knew that it all would not work. There could be nothing between him and the Terran woman. It was impossible. ”

“ On her upturned mouth he kissed her.
"More than any other man ever loved a woman I love you, Niska, little goddess," he cried.
The minutes and the hours of that day stood out ever afterward in Kent's life as unforgettable memories. There were times when they seemed illusory and unreal, as though he lived and breathed in an insubstantial world made up of gossamer things which must be the fabric of dream. These were moments when the black shadow of the tragedy from which they were fleeing pressed upon him, when the thought came to him that they were criminals racing with the law ”

“ They sat together now in the darkened room from which their father's coffin had been carried an hour before, and both were in bitter sorrow. It is a blessed thing, that atmosphere of love which pervades this whole wide restless world, emanating, no doubt, from the unseen presence of Him who is Love, and penetrating, in some one shape or other, into the life of the most forlorn amongst us. ”

“ I think and believe you are of the nature which only loves once in a lifetime, and I am world-worn and experienced enough to know I have never really loved before. How passionately I do now I cannot put into words. So let us keep our love sacred in our hearts, my darling, and the knowledge of it will comfort and soothe the anguish of separation. Beloved one, I am always thinking of you, and I want to tell you my vision of heaven would be to possess you for my wife. My happiest dream will always be that you are there—at Bracondale—queen of my home and my heart, darling. My darling! ”