And it was this tolerance she
mistrusted, not the fury. She saw that, all the while, in spite of
himself, he would have to be trying to save the world. And this
knowledge, whilst it comforted her heart somewhere with a little
self-satisfaction, stability, yet filled her with a certain sharp
contempt and hate of him. She wanted him to herself, she hated the
Salvator Mundi touch. It was something diffuse and generalised about
him, which she could not stand. He would behave in the same way, say
the same things, give himself as completely to anybody who came along,
anybody and everybody who liked to appeal to him. It was despicable, a
very insidious form of prostitution.
'But,' she said, 'you believe in individual love, even if you don't
believe in loving humanity--?'
'I don't believe in love at all--that is, any more than I believe in
hate, or in grief. Love is one of the emotions like all the others--and
so it is all right whilst you feel it But I can't see how it becomes an
absolute.
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