The discordant forces
of passion no longer disturbed the calm and orderly processes of his
mind, and he told himself that he saw clearly, because he saw stark
images of facts, stripped not only of the glamour of light and shade,
but even of the body of flesh and blood. Life spread before him like
a geometrical figure, constructed of perfect circles and absolutely
conformable to the rules and the principles of mathematics. That these
perfect circles should ever run wild and become a square was clearly
unthinkable. Because his nature was not quiescent it was impossible for
him to conceive of it in motion.
And all the while, in that silence, which seemed so harmless while it
was, in reality, so dangerous, the repressed yet violent force in
Judy wrought on his mood in which bare sense and bare thought were
unprotected by any covering of the love which had clothed them as far
back as he could remember. That breathless, palpitating appeal for
happiness--an appeal which is as separate from beauty as the body of
flesh is separate from the garment it wears--was drawing him slowly yet
inevitably toward the woman at his side.
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