"
A shade of sadness came into the eyes, and darkened them as she
spoke.
"But why do you think of that now?" I asked. "It is no use. The ten
years have gone beyond recall, and, if you have not been happy, you
have something to show for the time. You have been working."
"Yes," Lucia repeated; "I have been working."
There was silence. I hoped I had recalled to her thoughts the great
canvas that stood complete in her studio. For myself, I knew that
the keenest touch of pleasure that stirred my frame now was held in
the ever-present thought that this day saw the birth of my work in
Paris. Not for worlds would I have hinted this to Lucia. To have
breathed a word that assigned even a part of my pleasure at the
moment to anything but the possession of herself was the last thing
that I would have done.
Every pleasure is kin to every other, and they each tend to enhance
and strengthen another, so that in reality this inner pleasure of my
thoughts that reverted constantly to the Paris publishers was no
enemy, not even a rival, but rather a coadjutor of the passionate,
personal pleasure in the woman beside me. The brain already
intoxicated with one pleasant emotion lends itself more, not less,
readily to another, just as a brutal lover inflames his love with
wine. In precisely the same way, my passion for Lucia was inflamed
by the wine of gratified ambition.
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