With Stella, he could indulge freely in all
his romantic and philosophical visions. He could build castles in the
air, and she would pile towers and turrets on the imaginary edifices.
With Marionetta it was otherwise: she knew nothing of the world and
society beyond the sphere of her own experience. Her life was all
music and sunshine, and she wondered what any one could see to
complain of in such a pleasant state of things. She loved Scythrop,
she hardly knew why; indeed she was not always sure that she loved him
at all: she felt her fondness increase or diminish in an inverse ratio
to his. When she had manoeuvred him into a fever of passionate love,
she often felt and always assumed indifference: if she found that her
coldness was contagious, and that Scythrop either was, or pretended to
be, as indifferent as herself, she would become doubly kind, and raise
him again to that elevation from which she had previously thrown him
down. Thus, when his love was flowing, hers was ebbing: when his was
ebbing, hers was flowing. Now and then there were moments of level
tide, when reciprocal affection seemed to promise imperturbable
harmony; but Scythrop could scarcely resign his spirit to the pleasing
illusion, before the pinnace of the lover's affections was caught in
some eddy of the lady's caprice, and he was whirled away from the
shore of his hopes, without rudder or compass, into an ocean of mists
and storms.
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