'But who holds these magical scales? It is the holder who is responsible.'
'Affinity can only hold them on that millionth occasion when a perfect love is the result.'
'Usually Chance and Circumstance fill the scales, and they are two roguish boys who like to make mischief. Affinity is the angel; perhaps the only angel by which poor humanity is ever led into an earthly paradise.'
'And is so charming that we will not risk having anything coarse or commonplace said after it. Let us adjourn the debate till to-morrow.'
'Nay, _Majesté_; let us pass to another question: What is the greatest dilemma of Love?'
'To have to galvanise itself into an imitation of life when it is dead.'
'Is it worse to be the last to love, or the first to grow tired?'
'In the former case one's self-esteem is hurt; in the latter one's conscience.'
'The wounds of conscience are sooner cured than those of vanity.'
'No, whoever is least loved loves longest.'
'The contradictions of human nature will usually suffice to explain everything.'
'But there may be another explanation also; the one who is least loved is the least cloyed, and the most apprehensive of alteration.'
'Love is best worked with egotism, as gold is worked with alloy.'
'Surely the essential loveliness of love is self-sacrifice?'
'That is a theory. In fact, the only satisfactory love is one which gives and receives mutual pleasure. When there is self-sacrifice on one side the pleasure also is one-sided.'
'Then the revellers of the Decamerone knew more of love than Dante?'
'That is approaching a theme too full of dangers to be discussed--the difference between physical and spiritual love. I do not consider that you have satisfactorily answered the previous question: What is the greatest dilemma of Love?'
'When, in the open doorway of its house of life, one passion, grown old and grey, passes out limping, and meets another passion newly come thither, and laughing, with the blossoms of April in its sunny hair.'
'What a sonnet in a sentence! What is Love to do in such a case? Shall he detain the grey-haired crippled guest?'
'He cannot. For the more he shall endeavour to retain him the thinner and paler and more impalpable will the withered and lame passion grow.'