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A Duel
by
“It ought to have! And yet–watch the dancing couples!”
“To my mind true manliness is shown in loftiness of sentiment and intelligence of the heart.”
“Consequently a man whom the whole world calls weak and cowardly….”
“What do I care for the world and its opinion!”
“Do you know that you are a very remarkable woman?” said the young lawyer, feeling more and more interested.
“Not in the least remarkable! But you men are accustomed to regard women as dolls….”
“What sort of men do you mean? I, dear lady, have from my childhood looked up to woman as a higher manifestation of the species man, and from the day on which I fell in love with a woman, and she returned my love, I should be her slave.”
Adeline looked at him long and searchingly.
“You are a remarkable man,” she said, after a pause.
After each of the two had declared the other to be a remarkable specimen of the species man, and made a good many remarks on the futility of dancing, they began to talk of the melancholy influence of the moon. Then they returned to the ball-room and took their place in a set of quadrilles.
Adeline was a perfect dancer and the lawyer won her heart completely because he “danced like an innocent girl.”
When the set was over, they went out again on the verandah and sat down.
“What is love?” asked Adeline, looking at the moon as if she expected an answer from heaven.
“The sympathy of the souls,” he replied, and his voice sounded like the whispering breeze.
“But sympathy may turn to antipathy; it has happened frequently,” objected Adeline.
“Then it wasn’t genuine! There are materialists who say that there would be no such thing as love if there weren’t two sexes, and they dare to maintain that sensual love is more lasting than the love of the soul. Don’t you think it low and bestial to see nothing but sex in the beloved woman?”
“Don’t speak of the materialists!”
“Yes, I must, so that you may realise the loftiness of my feelings for a woman, if ever I fell in love. She need not be beautiful; beauty soon fades. I should look upon her as a dear friend, a chum. I should never feel shy in her company, as with any ordinary girl. I should approach her without fear, as I am approaching you, and I should say: ‘Will you be my friend for life?’ I should be able to speak to her without the slightest tremor of that nervousness which a lover is supposed to feel when he proposes to the object of his tenderness, because his thoughts are not pure.”
Adeline looked at the young man, who had taken her hand in his, with enraptured eyes.
“You are an idealist,” she said, “and I agree with you from the very bottom of my heart. You are asking for my friendship, if I understand you rightly. It shall be yours, but I must put you to the test first. Will you prove to me that you can pocket your pride for the sake of a friend?”
“Speak and I shall obey!”
Adeline took off a golden chain with a locket which she had been wearing round her neck.
“Wear this as a symbol of our friendship.”
“I will wear it,” he said, in an uncertain voice; “but it might make the people think that we are engaged.”
“And do you object?”
“No, not if you don’t! Will you be my wife?”
“Yes, Axel! I will! For the world looks askance at friendship between man and woman; the world is so base that it refuses to believe in the possibility of such a thing.”
And he wore the chain.
The world, which is very materialistic at heart, repeated the verdict of her friends:
“She marries him in order to be married; he marries her because he wants a wife.”
The world made nasty remarks, too. It said that he was marrying her for the sake of her money; for hadn’t he himself declared that anything so degrading as love did not exist between them? There was no need for friends to live together like married couples.