"Base and natural. Isn't the heart of love the longing to be loved? How could one miss such a chance--even if it meant more suffering for the loved one? Besides, it would be better for him that he should suffer."
But Maurice persisted, his eyes on his book, "If I were dying, and suffering through her fault, I would rather she were ignorant of it--rather she smiled."
"But you would rob her then of her right to suffer--of her right to love you more." Felicia turned her eyes on Geoffrey. "What would you wish? Don't say that you are as inhumanly noble as Mr. Wynne."
"I don't think we can in the least tell what we would wish."
"So that my selfishness and Mr. Wynne's magnanimity may both be illusory?"
"You are nearer the truth, I imagine. The poem seems to me rather mawkish," Geoffrey added.
Felicia, laughing, stood up, handing her books to Maurice. "Papa goes this morning and wants these; I must take them to him. You have cleared the rather foggy atmosphere, Mr. Daunt, though I don't think the poem mawkish."
Before Geoffrey, Felicia might smile with reassuring composure, and Maurice seem intent only on the psychology of a love poem; but to both of them there had been deeper meanings, deeper recognitions under the little scene. The sense of tension had strained at both hearts. In Felicia was that more vivid sense of life--of an approaching crisis; in Maurice an open owning to himself that he was desperately in love. More desperately than he had ever been with anybody; and yet--what was he to do about it? He knew that Felicia could bring him nothing, or next to nothing; he himself was frightfully in debt, and unless some book or picture would write or paint itself into astonishing remunerativeness he could see no prospect of independence. Angela was certainly there; odd to realize, and rather humiliating, how, in spite of all his talk against marrying for money she had always been there, a comfortable cushion in his thoughts for anxiety to flop on and find ease. But then he had really been half in love with Angela; the refuge had never been a distasteful one; only some inner impetus was needed to make it really alluring; and it was with a new sense of insecurity that he realized that falling desperately in love with Felicia made the refuge impossible--as far as any real comfort in it went. There was an added fear in the thought that a new attitude in Angela might have made the refuge inaccessible.