Perhaps Savina,
satisfied by the one occasion which--he had been so careful to insist--
must be the last, would regard him as merely importunate.
Strictly held to discretion by the fact of Fanny, Savina might have
found him then--more available than when free--only the acceptable
model of an indiscreet man. Yet, he reminded himself, he hadn't left
Eastlake, broken wide open his home, on account of Savina. This, he
again insisted, would have happened independently of her; his life in
Eastlake had broken up of its own accord; its elements had been too
tenuous for the withstanding any longer of the stress of existence.
But, he was forced to add, the collapse had been hastened by his
knowledge of Savina. And this brought him to the examination of what,
at bottom, she meant to him. What was her significance, her bulk, in
his life?
That could be approached only through an understanding of his feeling
for her, what it was now and what it might become; not conspicuously
easy of comprehension. Lee tried the old, the long inaccurately used,
word, love. He asked himself the question squarely--did he love Savina?
Damned if he knew! He might reply to that, he thought ruefully, if he
grasped what love was, what the blasted phrase meant. As it was, it
seemed to Lee, a dictionary of synonyms would be helpless to make all
its varied significances distinct. He tried a simpler approach--did he
want to be with Savina more than with anyone else? At last he had put a
question to himself that he could answer: he most assuredly preferred
being with Savina to anyone else he knew.
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