"No," she said quietly. "I can't. I don't understand myself and my
shifts of feeling. It makes me miserable."
"Look here, Sophie girl," Carr reached over and taking her by the hand
drew her up on the low arm of his chair, "you're asking yourself a more
or less important question directly, and you're asking it of me
indirectly. Maybe I can help you. At least I can tell how I see it. You
have all your life before you. You want to be happy. That's a universal
human attribute. Sometime or other you're going to mate with a man. That
too is a universal experience. Ordinary mating is based on sex instinct.
Love is mostly an emotional disturbance generated by natural causes for
profoundly natural and important ends. But marriage and the intimate
associations of married life require something more substantial than a
mere flare-up of animal instinct. Lots of men and women aren't capable
of anything else, and consequently they make the best of what's in
them. But there are natures far more complex. You, Sophie, are one of
those complex natures. With you, a union based on sex alone wouldn't
survive six months. Now, in this particular case, leaving out the fact
that you can't compare Tommy Ashe with any other man, because you don't
know any other man, can you conceive yourself living in a tolerable
state of contentment with Tommy if, say, you didn't feel any more
passion for him than you feel for, say, old Standing Wolf over there?"
"But that's absurd," the girl declared. "Because I have got that feeling
for Tommy Ashe, and therefore I can't imagine myself in any other state.
I can't look at it the cold-blooded way you do, Daddy dear."
"I'm stating a hypothetical case," Carr went on patiently. "You do now.
We'll take that for granted. Would you still have anything fundamental
in common with Tommy with that part left out? Suppose you got so you
didn't care whether he kissed you or not? Suppose it were no longer a
physical pleasure just to be near him. Would you enjoy his daily and
hourly presence then, in the most intimate relation a man and a woman
can hold to each other?"
"Why, I wouldn't live with him at all," the girl said positively. "I
simply couldn't. I know."
"You might have to," Carr answered gently. "You have never yet run foul
of circumstances over which you have no more power than man has over the
run of the tides. But we'll let that pass. I'm trying to help you,
Sophie, not to discourage you. There are some situations in which, and
some natures to whom, half a loaf is worse than no bread. Do you feel,
have you ever for an hour felt that you simply couldn't face an
existence in which Tommy Ashe had no part?"