“Is it a very – very – wonderful feeling?”
“So I have always been told,” the Marquis answered.
She looked at him in astonishment.
“You have always been told?” she repeated. “But surely you must have been in love ‒ dozens of times?”
The Marquis seemed for the moment to be at a loss for words.
Then he said,
“Real love, which is what you have in mind, is what the poets write about and it is not the same as what passes for love in the Social world. It is something very different.”
“How is that – possible?” Athina asked him with a puzzled look on her face.
“Men and women have been physically attracted to each other since the beginning of creation,” the Marquis told her, “which is right and natural.”
He paused as if he was choosing his words before he went on,
“But such attraction is s
