And suddenly, floodgates seemed to open within me. Streams of lava,
streams of molten fire, rushed out over my soul. I loved for the first
time like a man.
The next few days I went about as if lifted above the earth; in the
theatre, in the evening, I could not follow the performance, but sat in
the pit with my face in my hands, full of my new destiny, as though my
heart would burst.
And yet it was more a physical state, an almost mechanical outcome of
what to me was overwhelmingly new, association with a woman. It was not
because it was just this particular woman. For my emotional nature was
so composite that even in the first moment of my bliss I did not regard
this bliss as unmixed. From the very first hour, I felt a gnawing regret
that it was not I who had desired her, but she who had chosen me, so
that my love in my heart of hearts was only a reflection of hers.
VI.
About this time it so happened that another woman began to engage my
thoughts, but in an altogether different manner. Circumstances resulted
in my being taken into the secret of unhappy and disturbing domestic
relations in a well-to-do house to which I was frequently invited, and
where to all outward seeming all the necessary conditions of domestic
happiness were present.
The master of the house had in his younger days been a very handsome
man, lazy, not clever, and of an exceedingly passionate temper.
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