" And raising my
eyes I admired once again the drooping shore, the serrated line of
mountains sweeping round the bay. And the colour was so intense that
it overpowered the senses like a perfume, "like musk," I thought. When
I turned to Doris I could see she was wholly immersed in her own
sorrow, and it took all my art to persuade her to tell it, or it
seemed as if all my art of persuasion were necessary.
"As soon as you knew you loved him, you resolved to see him no more?"
Doris nodded.
"You sent him away before you yielded to him?"
She nodded, and looking at me her eyes filled with tears, but which
only seemed to make them still more beautiful, she told me that they
had both felt that it was impossible to deceive Albert.
* * * * *
All love stories are alike in this; they all contain what the
reviewers call "sordid details." But if Tristan had not taken
advantage of King Mark's absence on a hunting expedition, the world
would have been the poorer of a great love story; and what, after all,
does King Mark's happiness matter to us--a poor passing thing, whose
life was only useful in this, that it gave us an immortal love story?
And if Wagner had not loved Madame Wasendonck, and if Madame
Wasendonck had not been unfaithful to her husband, we should not have
had "Tristan.
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