It's a good thing for our comfort that there's so much of it we can't
see the fires. If the books of physics are to be credited, the center
of the earth is liquid flame; certainly it is hot enough here to
suggest something of the sort."
"It is worse in Oriente," Daniel informed him.
"What I have said," Lee Randon continued, "came from my remark, the one
you disagreed with, about the need of an understanding everywhere!
Isolated, in a chance individual like me, it is worse than useless,
fatal. It destroys the support of a common cause with a humanity only
less resentful than sentimental. And this has brought me to the reason
why--in spite of her splendid proposal--I can't go back to Fanny: I
have grown too detached to give her effort a possibility of success, of
happiness for her."
"If you are so cursed abstract, you may as well be in Eastlake as at La
Quinta," his brother asserted.
"Your saying that is curious," Lee replied, "for it is exactly what I
told a man, in circumstances remarkably like my own, not long ago. I
explained that life was all monotonously alike; and that, therefore, it
didn't really matter where he changed to. I still think that most of it
is inexcusable, perhaps hopeless, but I can't subscribe to it. What
Fanny wants is contrition and the return to a time forever lost. I
shouldn't be able to persuade her that I hadn't been in a temporary
fever which, if she were sufficiently careful, would go and leave
things very much as they were.
Pages:
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361