I listened throbbingly to each,
and to each I said, "I love you."
I was in an extraordinary psychological predicament. Lola had remarked,
"You are not quite alive even yet." I had come to complete life too
suddenly. This was the result. I got up and paced the bird-cage, which
the house-agents termed a reception-room, and wondered whether I were
going mad. It was not as if one woman represented the flesh and the
other the spirit. Then I might have seen the way to a decision. But both
had the large nature that comprises all. I could not exalt one in
any way to the abasement of the other. All my inherited traditions,
prejudices, predilections, all my training ranged me on the side of
Eleanor. I was clamouring for the real. Was she not the incarnation
of the real? Her very directness piqued me to a perverse and delicious
obliquity. And I knew, as I knew when I parted from her months before,
that it was only for me to awaken things that lay virginally dormant.
On the other hand stood Lola, with her magnetic seduction, her rich
atmosphere, her great wide simplicity of heart, holding out arms into
which I longed to throw myself.
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