DOI Artikel:
Cross, Victoria: Theodora: a fragment
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21805#0169
By Victoria Cross
l65
sake, to love it in its relation to its pleasure and not in its relation
to our own pleasure, is to feel the only love which is worthy of
offering to a fellow human being, the one which elevates—and
the only one—both giver and receiver. If we ever learn this
lesson, we learn it late. I had not learnt it yet.
I murmured a prescribed “ I shall be delighted,” and followed
Theodora behind a huge red tapestry screen that reached half-way
up to the ceiling.
We were then face to face with a door which she opened, and
we both passed over the threshold together.
She had called the room her own, so I glanced round it with a
certain curiosity. A room is always some faint index to the
character of its occupier, and as I looked a smile came to my face.
This room suggested everywhere, as I should have expected, an
intellectual but careless and independent spirit. There were two
or three tables, in the window, heaped up with books and strewn
over with papers. The centre-table had been pushed away, to
leave a clearer space by the grate, and an armchair, seemingly of
unfathomable depths, and a sofa, dragged forward in its place.
Within the grate roared a tremendous fire, banked up half-way
to the chimney, and a short poker was thrust into it between the
bars. The red light leapt over the whol-e room and made it
briliiant, and glanced over a rüg, and some tumbled cushions on
the floor in front of the fender, evidently where she had been
lying. Now, however, she picked up the cushions, and tossed
them into the corner of the couch, and sat down herseif in the
other corner.
“ Do you prefer the floor generally ? ” I asked, taking the
armchair as she indicated it to me.
cc Yes, one feels quite free and at ease lying on the floor,
whereas on a couch its lirriits are narrow, and one has the con-
straint
l65
sake, to love it in its relation to its pleasure and not in its relation
to our own pleasure, is to feel the only love which is worthy of
offering to a fellow human being, the one which elevates—and
the only one—both giver and receiver. If we ever learn this
lesson, we learn it late. I had not learnt it yet.
I murmured a prescribed “ I shall be delighted,” and followed
Theodora behind a huge red tapestry screen that reached half-way
up to the ceiling.
We were then face to face with a door which she opened, and
we both passed over the threshold together.
She had called the room her own, so I glanced round it with a
certain curiosity. A room is always some faint index to the
character of its occupier, and as I looked a smile came to my face.
This room suggested everywhere, as I should have expected, an
intellectual but careless and independent spirit. There were two
or three tables, in the window, heaped up with books and strewn
over with papers. The centre-table had been pushed away, to
leave a clearer space by the grate, and an armchair, seemingly of
unfathomable depths, and a sofa, dragged forward in its place.
Within the grate roared a tremendous fire, banked up half-way
to the chimney, and a short poker was thrust into it between the
bars. The red light leapt over the whol-e room and made it
briliiant, and glanced over a rüg, and some tumbled cushions on
the floor in front of the fender, evidently where she had been
lying. Now, however, she picked up the cushions, and tossed
them into the corner of the couch, and sat down herseif in the
other corner.
“ Do you prefer the floor generally ? ” I asked, taking the
armchair as she indicated it to me.
cc Yes, one feels quite free and at ease lying on the floor,
whereas on a couch its lirriits are narrow, and one has the con-
straint