And
yet I do believe that for every man there comes at last a woman--or
no, that is the wrong way of formulating it. For every man there
comes at last a time of life when the woman who then sets her
seal upon his imagination has set her seal for good. He will travel
over no more horizons; he will never again set the knapsack over
his shoulders; he will retire from those scenes. He will have gone
out of the business. That at any rate was the case with Edward and
the poor girl. It was quite literally the case. It was quite literally
the case that his passions--for the mistress of the Grand Duke, for
Mrs Basil, for little Mrs Maidan, for Florence, for whom you
will--these passions were merely preliminary canters compared to
his final race with death for her. I am certain of that. I am not
going to be so American as to say that all true love demands some
sacrifice. It doesn't. But I think that love will be truer and more
permanent in which self-sacrifice has been exacted. And, in the
case of the other women, Edward just cut in and cut them out as
he did with the polo-ball from under the nose of Count Baron von
Lel?ffel. I don't mean to say that he didn't wear himself as thin as
a lath in the endeavour to capture the other women; but over her
he wore himself to rags and tatters and death--in the effort to
leave her alone.
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