on from the pinnacle
of an essential truth."

Without quite understanding what I say, Rose smiles in answer to my
smile and we remain silent; our eyes gaze without seeing and our idle
hands trail in the wet grass. We hear, without listening, the hoarse,
fat, cooing-voluptuous voices of the doves: in the cool air of the
morning, among the leaves, the flowers and the branches, it is an
undercurrent of joy rising and falling, suspended for a moment and then
beginning again, in unwearying repetition.

Rose murmurs:

"Why are you always saying that I cannot make progress without love? It
makes me unhappy when you say that. I should have liked to have nothing
in the world but your affection. You kissed me so tenderly last night,
over the hedge."

"It is not the same thing, Rose darling. Certainly, there is nothing
more harmonious and purer than the kiss that joins the lips of two
friends like ourselves. But it is not the same thing as the kiss of
love, for the value of that lies not only in what it is, but in what it
promises; and it is a delight that sometimes echoes through our whole
lives.... You will have to love before you understand."

The girl folded her arms around my waist as though to bind herself to
me:

"But how would you have me love any one but yourself?" she asked. "Have
you not given me happiness? When I am with you, I seem to be living in a
fairy-tale."

Despite the pleasure which her words gave me, I made an effort to combat
them.

The character of a woman who tries to be just is full of these little
contradictions. In proportion as her heart is satisfied, she finds her
intellect becoming clearer and stronger; and what calls for her judgment
rarely leaves her heart unmoved. If Rose had not protested, I should
still have spoken, from a sense of duty, but my words would have been
without warmth or conviction. Now it seemed to me that her charming
compliment gave added force to what I was about to utter in the interest
of another's happiness.

She leant her face against my breast and my fingers played with her
sunny hair, her unbound hair, which was now waving joyously, crowning
her with a shimmer of amber and gold.

"No," I replied, "you must fall in love in order to develop and expand.
Our women's lives are like summer days: wisdom tells us to follow their
evolution. After the morning's waiting, we want the noon-day splendour
and rapture. As you never had that rapture, you have not yet known lov