She was, I believed, Cytherea. They looked alike.
They were the same! However, I mistook that sameness. I can understand
now, very clearly; it seems incredible that I had been so blind, so
fatuous, Daniel. I actually thought that there was a choice, a special
graciousness, existing and reserved for me." He laughed, not bitterly,
but in a wonderment that bordered on dismay. "I felt that I had found
it in Savina. I did get a lot there--more than I should have hoped for
--but not precisely that. At last I know." His voice was grave, and he
paused that Daniel might grasp the weight of what was to follow. "I had
made the mistake of thinking that I, as an individual, had any
importance. In my insane belief that a heavenly beauty, a celestial
chorus girl, was kept for me, I pictured myself as an object of tender
universal consideration.
"Damned anthropomorfic rot!
"It was a principle all the while," he cried; "a principle that would
fill the sky, as vast as space; and ignorant, careless, of me, it was
moving to its own end. And that--do you see, Daniel?--had grown
destructive. It had begun differently, naturally, in the healthy
fertility of animals and simple lives; but the conceit of men, men like
me, had opposed and antagonized it. Magnifying our sensibilities, we
had come to demand the dignity of separate immortalities. Separate
worms! We thought that the vitality in us was for the warming of our
own hearts and the seduction of our nerves.
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