He had written something of love in his time. In his perfect scheme of
human society, he had diagnosed with scientific precision the instinct
of sex attraction implanted in man's being for the most obvious and
grossly practical of reasons: an illusive candle-glow easily lit,
quickly extinguished when its uses were fulfilled. And lo, here was love
tearing him by the throat till he choked; an exquisite torture, a
rampant passion, a devastating flame, that most glorified when it burned
most deeply, aroar and ablaze forevermore.
He sat by the window and looked out over the sleeping city.
By slow degrees, he had allowed himself to be drawn from his academic
hermitry into contact with the visible life around him. And everywhere
that he had touched life, it had turned about and smitten him. He had
meant to be a great editor of the _Post_ some day, and the _Post_ had
turned him out with a brand of dishonor upon his forehead. He had tried
to befriend a friendless old man, and he had acquired a father whose
bequest was a rogue's debt, and his name a byword and a hissing. He had
let himself be befriended by a slim little girl with a passion for Truth
and enough blue eyes for two, and the price of that contact was this
pain in his heart which would not be still .
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