"
Mr. Penzance was resting his forehead on his hand, his elbow on his
chair's arm.
"This is profound unhappiness," he said. "It is profound unhappiness."
Mount Dunstan answered by a brusque gesture.
"But it will pass away," went on Penzance, "and not as you fear it
must," in answer to another gesture, fiercely impatient. "Not that way.
Some day--or night--you will stand here together, and you will tell her
all you have told me. I KNOW it will be so."
"What!" Mount Dunstan cried out. But the words had been spoken with such
absolute conviction that he felt himself become pale.
It was with the same conviction that Penzance went on.
"I have spent my quiet life in thinking of the forces for which we find
no explanation--of the causes of which we only see the effects. Long ago
in looking at you in one of my pondering moments I said to myself that
YOU were of the Primeval Force which cannot lose its way--which sweeps
a clear pathway for itself as it moves--and which cannot be held back.
I said to you just now that because you are a strong man you cannot be
sure that a woman you are--even in spite of yourself--making mad love
to, is unconscious that you are doing it. You do not know what your
strength lies in.
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