A
quality within him, in spite of him, had risen and swept him, under the
eyes of Cytherea, beyond every circumstance of his former life. The
resemblance between her and Savina he caught in fleet glances which
defied his efforts to summon them; and, where that similitude was
concerned, he was aware of a disconcerting, almost humiliating,
shifting of balance. At first, recognizing aspects of Cytherea in
Savina, now in Cytherea he merely found certain qualities of the woman.
The doll, it seemed, had not been absorbed in Savina; the distant
inanimate object was more real than the actual straining arms about his
neck, the insatiable murmur at his ear. Yet his happiness with Savina
was absolute, secure; and still totally different from her attitude
toward him. She often repeated, in a voice no longer varying from her
other impassioned speech, that she loved him; and, while this was a
phrase, a reassurance, no man in his situation could escape, he
returned it in a manner not wholly ringing with conviction.
It was the old difficulty--he wasn't sure, he couldn't satisfy himself,
about its meaning. He was not, for example, lost beyond knowledge or
perception in his feeling for Savina; carried along in the tempestuous
flood of her emotion, he yet had time to linger over and enjoy the
occurrences by the way. He liked each day for itself, and she regarded
it only as an insignificant detail of their unity.
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