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CHAPTER IX
THE CAR OF DESTINY

Athlyne did not feel safe till the French vessel was dipping her nose into the open Atlantic seas, and the Long Island Hills were a faint blue line on the western horizon. The last dozen hours of his stay in New York had been as though spent in prison. He knew well now that he really loved Joy; that this was no passing fancy, no mere desire of possession of a pretty woman. All phases of the passion of love, from the solely physical to the purely spiritual, have their own forces commanding different sets of nerves. Any one of these many phases may be all-compelling—for a time. But it is rather the blind dogged reckless pursuit of an immediate purpose than the total abandonment to a settled conviction. All the passions—or rather the phases of one passion—are separate and coordinate. Inasmuch as they are centred in one physical identity they are correlated. Nature has its own mysteries; and the inter-relations of various functions of a human being form not the least of them. As there are broad divisions of them—Christians accept three, the ancient Egyptians held to eight—so must we accept their uses and consequences. "Body and soul," so runs the saying of the illiterate, not seldom used in objurgation. "Body, mind and soul" says the quasi-thinker who believes that he has grasped the truth of the great parcelling-out of qualities. "Heart, soul and flesh" says the lover who knows that he understands. The lover alone it is who knows as distinguished from believing. For his world is complete; in it there is no striving after knowledge, no vain desire of many things, no self-seeking. For the true lover's one idea is to give. In such a world there can be no doubting, no

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