"
CHAPTER XX
I went home to my solitary dinner, and afterwards took down a volume of
Emerson and tried to read. I thought the cool and spacious philosopher
might allay a certain fever in my blood. But he did nothing of the kind.
He wrote for cool and spacious people like himself; not for corpses
like me revivified suddenly with an overcharge of vital force. I pitched
him--how much more truly companionable is a book than its author!--I
pitched him across the room, and thrusting my hands in my pockets and
stretching out my legs, stared in a certain wonder at myself.
I, Simon de Gex, was in love; and, _horribile dictu!_ in love with two
women at once. It was Oriental, Mormonic, New Century, what you will;
but there it was. I am ashamed to avow that if, at that moment, both
women had appeared before me and said "Marry us," I should have--well,
reflected seriously on the proposal. I had passed through curious enough
experiences, Heaven knows, already; but none so baffling as this. The
two women came alternately and knocked at my heart, and whispered in my
ear their irrefutable claims to my love.
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