Page:Thotharomance00nichgoog.djvu/147

142 whose nature had been distorted for a long period, and then suddenly had asserted its strength. The loveless lives of his predecessors had, by a necessary reaction, made him capable of an infinite depth of passion. Love, instead of being stamped out and crushed, as the first Thoth had supposed, had only been stored up from generation to generation. It was a transcendent passion, which did not obey the ordinary laws of life and descent. It was part of the very nature of life, and could only be destroyed by death. Besides this, his mother was by birth a child of the instincts and passions common to the races of mankind.

The search for reasons brought back Thoth, as far as was possible, to his former calmness of demeanour, and he began to talk of the future. He assumed all the time that the declaration of his passion was all that Daphne had required of him, and she had been too much