Page:HG Wells--secret places of the heart.djvu/227

215 “Not nearly so much as I might have done.”

“It is unfair to him. Atrociously unfair. He’s not my sort of man, perhaps, but it will hurt him cruelly according to the peculiar laws of his being. He seems to me a crawling sort of lover—with an immense self-conceit at the back of his crawlingness.”

“He has,” she endorsed.

“He backs himself to crawl—until he crawls triumphantly right over you.... I don’t like to think of the dream he has.... I take it he will lose. Is it fair to go into this game with him?”

“In the interests of Lake,” she said, smiling softly at Sir Richmond in the moonlight. “But you are perfectly right.”

“And suppose he doesn’t lose!”

Sir Richmond found himself uttering sentiments.

“There is only one decent way in which a civilized man and a civilized woman may approach one another. Passionate desire is not enough. What is called love is not enough. Pledges, rational considerations, all these things are worthless. All these things are compatible with hate. The primary essential is friendship, clear understanding, absolute confidence. Then within that condition, in that elect relationship, love is permissible, mating, marriage or no marriage, as you will—all things are permissible....”

Came a long pause between them.