CHAPTER XXIV 330
which a husband ' s ardour extends. Yet, after all, as a friend and companion, I hope never to become quite distasteful to my dear master."
" Distasteful! and like you again! I think I shall like you again, and yet again: and I will make you confess I do not only LIKE, but LOVE you-- with truth, fervour, constancy."
" Yet are you not capricious, sir?"
" To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts-- when they open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper: but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break-- at once supple and stable, tractable and consistent-- I am ever tender and true."
" Had you ever experience of such a character, sir? Did you ever love such an one?"
" I love it now."
" But before me: if I, indeed, in any respect come up to your difficult standard?"
" I never met your likeness. Jane, you please me, and you master me-- you seem to submit, and I like the sense of pliancy you impart; and while I am twining the soft, silken skein round my finger, it sends a thrill up my arm to my heart. I am influenced-- conquered; and the influence is sweeter than I can express; and the conquest I undergo has a witchery beyond any triumph I can win. Why do you smile, Jane? What does that inexplicable, that uncanny turn of countenance mean?"
" I was thinking, sir( you will excuse the idea; it was involuntary), I was thinking of Hercules and Samson with their charmers-- "
" You were, you little elfish-- "