" She knew the ritual now--he
could go over it all again and again, and each time with the same happy
wonder. Was it odious of her that she was beginning to find it a little
comic? And how did it come about that often, when she might be filled
with the deepest longing for him, and he burst in upon her boisterously,
hungry for her caresses, she would grow suddenly cold, and put him
aside? What was the matter? Why did she behave like this?
Perhaps it was because he was so much the stronger, so overwhelming in
his effect on her that she had to keep a tight hold on herself to avoid
being swept clean away and losing her identity. At one moment they might
be sitting in the lamplight, chatting easily together, and so near in
heart and mind; and the next it would be over--he would suddenly have
started up and be pacing up and down the room, delivering a sort of
lecture. Merle--isn't it marvellous, the spiritual life of plants? And
then would come a torrent of talk about strange plant-growths in
the north and in the south, plants whose names she had never even
heard--their struggle for existence, their loves and longings, their
heroism in disease, the divine marvel of their death. Their inventions,
their wisdom, aye, their religious sense--is it not marvellous, Merle?
From this it was only a step to the earth's strata, fossils, crystals--a
fresh lecture. And finally he would sum up the whole into one great
harmony of development, from the primary cell-life to the laws of
gravitation that rule the courses of the stars.
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