It is the same with
passion. It is impossible to maintain it as such. Either it
evaporates in gratification or it undergoes some metamorphosis in
suppression."
I said nothing. There was a sort of coldness and weight in his words
and tone that increased my own apprehensions.
"You can keep nothing up to the pitch of a crisis. We all know that.
Even a kettle of water, when it is once boiling, you cannot keep it
so. It must boil over into the flames or simmer down or dry up. And
if you reject a woman at the crisis of her passion, there is an
enormous probability that, in waiting, her virtue or her inclination
or her health will break down. Either her feelings may transport her
into some folly or they may cool. If her will is too strong to allow
the folly, and her nature too ardent to permit the cooling, then her
constitution must give way. This last is what, judging from all I
see, I should think--since you ask my opinion, old fellow, you know-
-has happened in Lucia's case."
I looked at him with a faint feeling of surprise. His manner, voice,
and words conveyed such an idea of certainty and perfect decision in
his own mind.
"Yes," I answered; "I suppose that is it. Well, that is what she
told me, virtually, herself."
"You cannot wonder at it!"
I coloured hotly as I answered,--
"I know it seems as if I had been a confounded prig in refusing her
last year--people may say so; but if I had given in and kept her
with me in Paris, then everybody would have been slanging me for
that!"
Dick laughed.
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