DOI article:
Cross, Victoria: Theodora: a fragment
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21805#0168
164 Theodora
study, where we shan’t be disturbed, and stay and have tea with
me, will you ? ”
She got up as she spoke.
The room had darkened considerably while we had been sitting
there, and only a dull light came from the leaden, snow-laden sky
beyond the panes, but the firelight feil strongly across her figure
.as she stood, glancing and playing up it towards the slight waist,
and throwing scarlet upon the white throat and under-part of the
full chin. In the strong shadow on her face I could see
merely the two seducing eyes. Easily excitable where once a
usually hypercritical or rather hyperfanciful eye has been attracted,
I feit a keen sense of pleasure stir me as I watched her rise and
stand, that sense of pleasure which is nothing more than an
assurance to the roused and unquiet instincts within one, of
future satisfaction or gratification, with, from, or at the expense of
the object creating the Sensation. Unconsciously a certainty of
possession of Theodora to-day, to-morrow, or next year, hlled me
for the moment as completely as if I had just made her my wife.
The instinct that demanded her was immediately answered by a
mechanical process of the brain, not with doubt or fear, but
simple confidence. “This is a pleasant and delightful object to
you—as others have been. Later it will be a source of enjoy-
ment to you—as others have been.” And the lulling of this
painful instinct is what'we know as pleasure. And this instinct
and its answer are exactly that which we should not feel within us
for any beloved object. It is this that tends inevitably to degrade
the loved one, and to debase our own passion. If the object is
worthy and lovely in any sense, we should be ready to love it as
being such, for itself, as moralists preach to us of Virtue, as
theologians preach to us of the Deity. To love or at least to
strive to love an object for the object’s sake, and not our own
sake,
study, where we shan’t be disturbed, and stay and have tea with
me, will you ? ”
She got up as she spoke.
The room had darkened considerably while we had been sitting
there, and only a dull light came from the leaden, snow-laden sky
beyond the panes, but the firelight feil strongly across her figure
.as she stood, glancing and playing up it towards the slight waist,
and throwing scarlet upon the white throat and under-part of the
full chin. In the strong shadow on her face I could see
merely the two seducing eyes. Easily excitable where once a
usually hypercritical or rather hyperfanciful eye has been attracted,
I feit a keen sense of pleasure stir me as I watched her rise and
stand, that sense of pleasure which is nothing more than an
assurance to the roused and unquiet instincts within one, of
future satisfaction or gratification, with, from, or at the expense of
the object creating the Sensation. Unconsciously a certainty of
possession of Theodora to-day, to-morrow, or next year, hlled me
for the moment as completely as if I had just made her my wife.
The instinct that demanded her was immediately answered by a
mechanical process of the brain, not with doubt or fear, but
simple confidence. “This is a pleasant and delightful object to
you—as others have been. Later it will be a source of enjoy-
ment to you—as others have been.” And the lulling of this
painful instinct is what'we know as pleasure. And this instinct
and its answer are exactly that which we should not feel within us
for any beloved object. It is this that tends inevitably to degrade
the loved one, and to debase our own passion. If the object is
worthy and lovely in any sense, we should be ready to love it as
being such, for itself, as moralists preach to us of Virtue, as
theologians preach to us of the Deity. To love or at least to
strive to love an object for the object’s sake, and not our own
sake,