What's
more, I believe it's the very rarest thing for people to be in
love with each other. Reardon and his wife perhaps were an
instance; perhaps--I'm not quite sure about her. As a rule,
marriage is the result of a mild preference, encouraged by
circumstances, and deliberately heightened into strong sexual
feeling. You, of all men, know well enough that the same kind of
feeling could be produced for almost any woman who wasn't
repulsive.'
'The same kind of feeling; but there's vast difference of
degree.'
'To be sure. I think it's only a matter of degree. When it rises
to the point of frenzy people may strictly be said to be in love;
and, as I tell you, I think that comes to pass very rarely
indeed. For my own part, I have no experience of it, and think I
never shall have.'
'I can't say the same.'
They laughed.
'I dare say you have imagined yourself in love--or really been so
for aught I know--a dozen times. How the deuce you can attach any
importance to such feeling where marriage is concerned I don't
understand.'
'Well, now,' said Whelpdale, 'I have never upheld the theory--at
least not since I was sixteen--that a man can be in love only
once, or that there is one particular woman if he misses whom he
can never be happy.
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