Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - In Vain.djvu/129

Rh which give more than the right to fondling and kisses. The cup was half drunk. Legalization would lessen the charm of forbidden fruit, would decrease sweetness already tasted, more than it would promise new.

It will appear that Augustinovich was right in some degree.

Yosef perhaps did not acknowledge to himself that his reason for not desiring to change those relations was because he lived agreeably in them.

Did he not love Helena, then?

He loved her; otherwise he would not have visited her daily, he would not have kissed her lips, her forehead, her hands; but let us remember that this met just half the desires which in other conditions we satisfy through the way of the altar. The idea of a betrothed is that of a woman disrobed behind a thin veil, we go to the altar to remove the veil; when the veil disappears a part of the charm is lost. Honest human nature recompenses the loss by the idea of attachment; when attachment fails, habit, a thing still less enticing, appears in the place of it.

But life rolls on.

Yosef had touched the veil; two ways led to its removal,—one the way of the altar; the