Man and Maid

"Shall you toss up?"

"No--Rochester is coming up from the front to-morrow just for the night,

I am going to dine with him at Larue's--alone, I shall sample him all

the time--I sampled Jim when he was last in London a fortnight ago--"

"You will tell me about it when you have decided, won't you, Nina. You

see I have become a brother, and am interested in the psychological

aspects of things."

"Of course I will"--then she went on meditatively, her rather plaintive

voice low.

"I think all our true feeling is used up, Nicholas--our souls--if we

have souls--are blunted by the war agony. Only our senses still feel.

When Jim looks at me with his attractive blue eyes, and I see the D.S.O.

and the M.C., and his white nice teeth--and how his hair is brushed, and

how well his uniform fits, I have a jolly all-overish sensation--and I

don't much listen to what he is saying--he says lots of love--and I

think I would really like him all the time. Then, when he has gone I

think of other things, and I feel he would not understand a word about

them, and because he isn't there I don't feel the delicious all-overish

sensation, so I rather decide to marry Rochester--there would be such

risk--because when you are married to a man, it is possible to get much

fonder of him. Jim is a year younger than I am--It would be a strain,

perhaps in a year or two--especially if I got fond."

"You had better take the richer," I told her--"Money stands by one, it

is an attraction which even the effects of war never varies or lessens,"

and I could hear that there was bitterness in my voice.

"You are quite right," Nina said, taking no notice of it--"but I don't

want money--I have enough for every possible need, and my boy has his

own. I want something kind and affectionate to live with."

"You want a master--and a slave."

"Yes."

"Nina, when you loved me--what did you want?"

"Just you, Nicholas--just you."

"Well, I am here now, but an eye and a leg gone, and a crooked shoulder,

changes me;--so it is true love--even the emotion of the soul, depends

upon material things--"

Nina thought for a while.

"Perhaps not the emotion of the soul--if we have souls?--but what we

know of love now certainly does. I suppose there are people who can love

with the soul, I am not one of them."