He had now become hardened by constant unsympathetic contact.
Suddenly a stranger had appeared who was an inhabitant of his own world
and talked his own tongue. The prospect of genuine intercourse
disclosed itself. None but those who have felt it can imagine the
relief, the joyous expansion, which follow the discovery after long
years of imprisonment with decent people of a person before whom it is
unnecessary to stifle what we most care to express. No wonder he was
excited!
But the stranger was a woman. He meditated much that morning on her
singular aptitude for reflection, but he presently began to dream over
figure, hair, eyes, hands. A picture in the most vivid colours painted
itself before him, and he could not close his eyes to it. He was
distressed to find himself the victim of this unaccustomed tyranny. He
did not know that it is impossible for a man to love a woman's soul
without loving her body. There is no such thing as a spiritual love
apart from a corporeal love, the one celestial and the other earthly,
and the spiritual love begets a passion peculiar in its intensity.
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