A turn of the eyebrow, a tone of the voice, a queer
characteristic gesture--all these things, and it is these things that
cause to arise the passion of love--all these things are like so many
objects on the horizon of the landscape that tempt a man to walk
beyond the horizon, to explore. He wants to get, as it were, behind
those eyebrows with the peculiar turn, as if he desired to see the
world with the eyes that they overshadow. He wants to hear that
voice applying itself to every possible proposition, to every
possible topic; he wants to see those characteristic gestures against
every possible background. Of the question of the sex-instinct I
know very little and I do not think that it counts for very much in
a really great passion. It can be aroused by such nothings--by an
untied shoelace, by a glance of the eye in passing-- that I think it
might be left out of the calculation. I don't mean to say that any
great passion can exist without a desire for consummation. That
seems to me to be a commonplace and to be therefore a matter
needing no comment at all. It is a thing, with all its accidents, that
must be taken for granted, as, in a novel, or a biography, you take
it for granted that the characters have their meals with some
regularity.
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