But it had been growing increasingly hard. He was only human
after all. And he was very comfortable. Love, healthy human love,
thrives on physical ease. Indigestion is a greater foe to it than
poverty. Great love songs are written, not by poets starving in
hall bedrooms, with insistent hunger gnawing and undermining all
that is of the spirit, but by full-fed gentlemen who sing out of
an overflowing of content and wide fellowship, and who write, no
doubt, just after dinner. Love, being a hunger, does not thrive
on hunger.
Thus Peter. He had never found women essential, being occupied in
the struggle for other essentials. Women had had little part in
his busy life. Once or twice he had seen visions, dreamed dreams,
to waken himself savagely to the fact that not for many years
could he afford the luxury of tender eyes looking up into his, of
soft arms about his neck. So he had kept away from women with
almost ferocious determination. And now!
He drew a chair before the stove and sat down. Standing or
sitting, he was much too large for the kitchen. He sat in the
chair, with his hands hanging, fingers interlaced between his
knees.
The firelight glowed over his strong, rather irregular features.
Harmony, knife poised over the evening's potatoes, looked at him.
"I think you are sad to-night, Peter."
"Depressed a bit. That's all."
"It isn't money again?"
It was generally money with any of the three, and only the week
before Peter had found an error in his bank balance which meant
that he was a hundred Kronen or so poorer than he had thought.
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