But in
the car, later, he turned to her, roughly.
"You needn't ask any girls for me," he said. "I only want one woman,
and if I can't have her I don't want any one."
At first the very fact that he could not have her had been,
unconsciously, the secret of her attraction. She was a perfect
thing, and unattainable. He could sigh for her with longing and
perfect safety. But as time went on, with that incapacity of any
human emotion to stand still, but either to go on or to go back,
his passion took on a more human and less poetic aspect. She
satisfied him less, and he wanted more.
For one thing, he dreamed that strange dream of mankind, of making
ice burn, of turning snow to fire. The old chimera of turning the
cold woman to warmth through his own passion began to obsess him.
Sometimes he watched Natalie, and had strange fancies. He saw her
lit from within by a fire, which was not the reflection of his, but
was recklessly her own. How wonderful she would be, he thought.
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