"My dear Durward, what do you suppose I'm after?... rape and
adultery and Markovitch after us with a pistol? I tell you--" and here
he spoke fiercely, as though he were challenging the whole ice-bound
world around us--"that I want nothing but her happiness, her safety,
her comfort! Do you suppose that I'm such an ass as not to recognise the
kind of thing that my loving her would lead to? I tell you I'm after
nothing for myself, and that not because I'm a fine unselfish character,
but simply because the thing's too big to let anything into it but
herself. She shall never know that I care twopence about her, but she's
got to be happy and she's got to be safe.... Just now, she's neither of
those things, and that's why I've spoken to you.... She's unhappy and
she's afraid, and that's got to change. I wouldn't have spoken of this
to you if I thought you'd be so short-sighted...."
"All right! All right!" I said testily. "You may be a kind of Galahad,
Lawrence, outside all natural law. I don't know, but you'll forgive me
if I go for a moment on my own experience--and that experience is, that
you can start on as highbrow an elevation as you like, but love doesn't
stand still, and the body's the body, and to-morrow isn't yesterday--not
by no means.
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