THE STEADFAST HEART
was that in that hour Angus Burke knew his real birth—he began to live.
He thought of Lydia—thrilled joyously as she entered his mind. To this point his musings had been pleasurable. Now, suddenly, he understood that love is a craving, a hunger for a definite individual, a ravenous demand for a supplement to one’s self—a craving which, unsatisfied, fed on itself and was capable of bringing grief or even despair….
Love, he comprehended, was a forerunner of marriage, a moving cause of marriage. It urged on to that end, was Nature’s force which drove mankind to mating. He had never thought of marriage clearly; had never asked himself why one man selected for his wife a certain woman instead of any woman…. Now it was clear, sharply, painfully clear.
He loved Lydia Canfield!… Love!… Marriage!….
“I can never have her,” he said to himself. “Never….”
He compared himself to her, compared her life with his life, nor could he drive his imagination to see his future in intimate contact with Lydia’s. It was unthinkable. He remembered Lydia’s pronouncements on the subject of family; remembered how she revered blood and ancestry—how she had scorned the Reynolds girl for
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