"
"I will," said Diana, "your friend always, because--I love you too."
So the chaise rolled away. And presently Diana and I jogged camp-wards
behind Diogenes, through an evening fragrant with new-mown hay; from
tree and hedgerow birds were singing their vesper hymn and we drove
awhile in wistful silence. But suddenly Diana turned and caught my
hand so that I wondered at the eager clasp of these fingers and the
tremulous yearning in her voice when she spoke.
"O Peregrine--oh, my dear--if only God would make me--like her--a
lady--like Barbara. Do you think He would if--I pray--very hard?"
"Of course!" said I, kissing her hand. "Though, indeed--"
"Then I will, dear Peregrine--this very night--and every night."
CHAPTER XXXVII
A DISQUISITION ON TRUE LOVE
"Love," said his lordship, laying down his fishing rod, "love, from
the philosophically materialistic standpoint, is an unease, a disquiet
of the mind, fostered in the male by hallucination, and in the female
by determined self-delusion."
"Sir," said I, "your meaning is somewhat involved, I would beg you to
be a little more explicit."
"Then pray observe me, Peregrine! An ordinary young man falls in love
with an ordinary young woman because, for some inexplicable reason,
she appears to him a mystery, bewitchingly incomprehensible. Suffering
under this strange hallucination, he wooes, whereupon our ordinary
young woman, shutting her eyes to the ordinariness of our very
ordinary young man, now deliberately deludes herself into the firm
belief that he is the virile presentment of her own impossible,
oft-dreamed ideal.
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