"The average man's--yes, perhaps so," agreed Paul. "But then, what does the average person of either sex know of love at all?"
"They think they know," she said. "Really think it, but love like ours happens perhaps once in a century, and generally makes history of some sort--bad or good."
"Let it!" said Paul. "I am like Antony in that poem you read me last night. I must have you for my own, 'Though death, dishonour, anything you will, stand in the way.' He knew what he was talking about, Antony! so did the man who wrote the poem!"
"He was a great sculptor as well as a poet," the lady said. "And yes, he knew all about those wonderful lovers better far than your Shakespeare did, who leaves me quite cold when I read his view of them. Cleopatra was to me so subtle, so splendid a queen."
"Of course she was just you, my heart," said Paul. "You are her soul living over again, and that poem you must give me to keep some day, because it says just what I shall want to say if ever I must be away from you for a time. See, have I remembered it right?
"'Tell her, till I see Those eyes, I do not live--that Rome to me Is hateful,--tell her--oh!--I know not what--That every thought and feeling, space and spot, Is like an ugly dream where she is not; All persons plagues; all living wearisome; All talking empty...'.
"Yes, that is what I should say--I say it to myself now even in the short while I am absent from you dressing!"
The lady's eyes brimmed with tenderness. "Paul!--you do love me, my own!" she said.
"Oh, why can't we go on and travel together, darling?" Paul continued. "I want you to show me the world--at least the best of Europe. In every country you would make me feel the spirit of the place. Let us go to Greece, and see the temples and worship those old gods. They knew about love, did they not?"
The lady leant back and smiled, as if she liked to hear him talk.
"I often ask myself did they really know," she said. "They knew the whole material part of it at any rate. They were perhaps too practical to have indulged in the mental emotions we weave into it now--but they were wise, they did not educate the wives and daughters, they realised that to perform well domestic duties a woman's mind should not be over-trained in learning. Learning and charm and grace of mind were for the others, the hetaerae of whom they asked no tiresome ties. And in all ages it is unfortunately not the simple good women who have ruled the hearts of men. Think of Pericles and Aspasia--Antony and Cleopatra--Justinian and Theodora--Belisarius and Antonina--and later, all the mistresses of the French kings--even, too, your English Nelson and Lady Hamilton! Not one of these was a man's ideal of what a wife and mother ought to be. So no doubt the Greeks were right in that principle, as they were right in all basic principles of art and balance. And now we mix the whole thing up, my Paul--domesticity and learning--nerves and art, and feverish cravings for the impossible new--so we get a conglomeration of false proportions, and a ceaseless unrest."