f
mine? And isn't it good for her that she should love?"

"Perfect love cherishes. Perfect love foregoes."

Sir Richmond found his mind wandering far away from the immediate
question. "Perfect love," the phrase was his point of departure. Was
it true that he could not love passionately and completely? Was that
fundamentally what was the matter with him? Was that perhaps what was
the matter with the whole world of mankind? It had not yet come to
that power of loving which makes action full and simple and direct and
unhesitating. Man upon his planet has not grown up to love, is still an
eager, egotistical and fluctuating adolescent. He lacks the courage to
love and the wisdom to love. Love is here. But it comes and goes, it
is mixed with greeds and jealousies and cowardice and cowardly
reservations. One hears it only in snatches and single notes. It is like
something tuning up before the Music begins.... The metaphor altogether
ran away with Sir Richmond's half dreaming mind. Some day perhaps all
life would go to music.

Love was music and power. If he had loved enough he need never have
drifted away from his wife. Love would have created love, would have
tolerated and taught and inspired. Where there is perfect love there
is neither greed nor impatience. He would have done his work calmly.
He would have won his way with his Committee instead of fighting and
quarrelling with it perpetually....

"Flimsy creatures," he whispered. "Uncertain health. Uncertain
strength. A will that comes and goes. Moods of baseness. Moods of utter
beastliness.... Love like April sunshine. April?..."

He dozed and dreamt for a time of spring passing into a high summer
sunshine, into a continuing music, of love. He thought of a world like
some great playhouse in which players and orchestra and audience all
co-operate in a noble production without dissent or conflict. He thought
he was the savage of thirty thousand years ago dreaming of the great
world that is still perhaps thirty thousand years ahead. His effort to
see more of that coming world than indistinct and cloudy pinnacles and
to hear more than a vague music, dissolved his dream and left him awake
again and wrestling with the problem of Miss Grammont.

Section 2

The shadow of Martin stood over him, inexorable. He had to release Miss
Grammont from the adventure into which he had drawn her. This decision
stood out stern-and inevitable in his mind with no conceivable
alternative.