Temporal Power: A Study in Supremacy — Reading Notes

as a thought! Had I loved anyone else I would never have married you,--no!--though you had been ten times a prince and king! No! You do not understand. I come to you heartwhole and passionless, without a single love-word chronicled in my girlhood’s history, or a single incident you may not know. I have never loved any man, because from my very childhood I have hated and feared all men! I loathe their presence--their looks--their voices--their manners,--if one should touch my hand in ordinary courtesy, my instincts are offended and revolted, and the sense of outrage remains with me for days. My mother knows of this, and says I am ‘unnatural,’--it may be so. But unnatural or not, it is the truth; judge therefore the extent of the sacrifice I make to God and our two countries in giving myself to you!”

The prince stood amazed and confounded. Did she rave? Was she mad? He studied her with a curious, half-doubting scrutiny, and noted the composure of her attitude, the cold serenity of her expression,--there was evidently no hysteria, no sur-excitation of nerves about this calm statuesque beauty which in every line and curve of loveliness silently mutinied against him, and despised him. Puzzled, yet fascinated, he sought in his mind for some clue to her meaning.

“There are women” she went on--“to whom love, or what is called love, is necessary,--for whom marriage is the utmost good of existence. I am not one of these. Had I my own choice I would live my life away from all men,--I would let nothing of myself be theirs to claim,--I would give all I am and all I have to God, who made me what I am. For truly and honestly, without any affectation at all, I look upon marriage, not as an honour, but a degradation!”

Had she been less in earnest, he might have smiled at this, but her beauty, intensified as it was by the fervour of her feeling, seemed transfigured into something quite supernatural which for the moment dazzled him.

“Am I to understand--” he began.

She interrupted him by a swift gesture, while the rich colour swept over her face in a warm wave.

“Understand nothing”--she said,--“but this--that I do not love you, because I can love no man! For the rest I am your wife; and as your wife I give myself to you and your nation wholly and in all things--save love!”

He advanced and took her hands in his.

“This is a strange bargain!” he said, and gently kissed her.

She answered nothing,--only a faint shiver trembled through her as she endured the caress. For a moment or two he surveyed her in silence,--it was a singular and novel experience for him, as a future king, to be the lawful possessor of a woman’s beauty, and yet with all his sovereignty to be unable to waken one thrill of tenderness in the frozen soul imprisoned in such exquisite flesh and blood. He was inclined to disbelieve her assertions,--surely he thought, there must be emotion, feeling, passion in this fair creature, who, though she seemed a goddess newly descended from inaccessible heights of heaven was still _only_ a woman? And upon the whole he was not ill-pleased with the curious revelation she had made of herself. He preferred the coldness of women to their volcanic eruptions, and would take more pains to melt the snow of reserve than to add fuel to the flame of ardour.

“You have been very frank with me,” he said at last, after a pause, as he loosened her hands and moved a little apart from her--“And whether your physical and mental hatred of my sex is a defect in your nature, or an exceptional virtue, I shall not quarrel with it. I am myself not without faults; and the chiefest of these is one most common to all men. I desire what I may not have, and covet what I do not possess. So! We understand each other!”

She raised her eyes--those beautiful deep eyes with the moonlight glamour in them,--and for an instant the shining Soul of her, pure and fearless, seemed to spring up and challenge to spiritual combat him who was now her body’s master. Then, bending her head with a graceful yet proud submission, she retired.