And was it not possible that such conditions should unite in a woman
like Beatrice, who combined in herself a beauty of body which was only
outpassed by the beauty of her mind? It was no answer to say that most
women could never inspire the unearthly passion with which he had been
shaken some ten hours past, or that most men could never become aware of
the inspiration. Has not humanity powers and perceptions denied to the
cattle of the fields, and may there not be men and women as far removed
from their fellows in this respect as these are from the cattle?
But the weak point of mysterious occurrences is that they lead nowhere,
and do not materially alter the facts of life. One cannot, for instance,
plead a mystery in a court of law; so, dropping the imaginative side of
the question as one beyond him, Geoffrey came to its practical aspect,
only to find it equally thorny.
Odd as it may seem, Geoffrey did not to this moment know the exact
position which he occupied in the mind of Beatrice, or that she occupied
in his. He was not in love with her, at least not in a way in which he
had ever experienced the influence of that, on the whole, inconvenient
and disagreeable passion.
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