is young. His youth shall cover
all his deficiencies and wipe out all his sins! Imperial love, monarch
and despot of the human soul, is become the servant of boys for the wage
of a girl's first thoughtless kiss. If that is love let it perish out of
the world, with the bloom of the wood violet in spring, with the flutter
of the bright moth in June, with the song of the nightingale and the
call of the mocking-bird, with all things that are fair and lovely and
sweet but for a few short days. If that is love, why then love never
made a wound, nor left a scar, nor broke a heart in this easy-going
rose-garden of a world. The rose blooms, blows, fades and withers and
feels nothing. If that is love, we may yet all develop into passionless
promoters of a flat and unprofitable commonwealth; the earth may yet be
changed to a sweetmeat for us to feed on, and the sea to sugary lemonade
for us to drink, as the mad philosopher foretold, and we may yet all be
happy after love has left us."

Unorna smiled, while he laughed again.

"Good," she said. "You tell me what love is not, but you have not told
me what it is."

"Love is the immortal essence of mortal passion, together they are as
soul and body, one being; separate them, and the body without the soul
is a monster, the soul without the body is no longer human, nor earthly,
nor real to us at all, though still divine. Love is the world's maker,
master and destroyer, the magician whose word can change water to blood,
and blood to fire, the dove to a serpent, and the serpent to a dove--ay,
and can make of that same dove an eagle, with an eagle's beak, and
talons, and air-cleaving wing-stroke. Love is the spirit of life and the
angel of death. He speaks, and the thorny wilderness of the lonely heart
is become a paradise of flowers. He is silent, and the garden is but a
blackened desert over which a destroying flame has passed in the arms of
the east wind. Love stands at the gateway of each human soul, holding in
his hands a rose and a drawn sword--the sword is for the many, the rose
for the one."

He sighed and was silent. Unorna looked at him curiously.

"Have you ever loved, that you should talk like that?" she asked. He
turned upon her almost fiercely.

"Loved? Yes, as you can never love; as you, in your woman's heart, can
never dream of loving--with every thought, with every fibre, with
every pulse, with every breath; with a love that is burning the old oak
through and through