“How do I know?” laughed Aaron. “Perhaps I’ve got a DAMNED urge, at the bottom of me. I’m sure it’s nothing divine.”

“Very well then. Now, in life, there are only two great dynamic urges—do you believe me—?”

“How do I know?” laughed Aaron. “Do you want to be believed?”

“No, I don’t care a straw. Only for your own sake, you’d better believe me.”

“All right then—what about it?”

“Well, then, there are only two great dynamic urges in LIFE: love and power.”

“Love and power?” said Aaron. “I don’t see power as so very important.”

“You don’t see because you don’t look. But that’s not the point. What sort of urge is your urge? Is it the love urge?”

“I don’t know,” said Aaron.

“Yes, you do. You know that you have got an urge, don’t you?”

“Yes—” rather unwillingly Aaron admitted it.

“Well then, what is it? Is it that you want to love, or to be obeyed?”

“A bit of both.”

“All right—a bit of both. And what are you looking for in love?—A woman whom you can love, and who will love you, out and out and all in all and happy ever after sort of thing?”

“That’s what I started out for, perhaps,” laughed Aaron.

“And now you know it’s all my eye!” Aaron looked at Lilly, unwilling to admit it. Lilly began to laugh.

“You know it well enough,” he said. “It’s one of your lost illusions, my boy. Well, then, what next? Is it a God you’re after? Do you want a God you can strive to and attain, through love, and live happy ever after, countless millions of eternities, immortality and all that? Is this your little dodge?”

Again Aaron looked at Lilly with that odd double look of mockery and unwillingness to give himself away.

“All right then. You’ve got a love–urge that urges you to God; have you? Then go and join the Buddhists in Burmah, or the newest fangled Christians in Europe. Go and stick your head in a bush of Nirvana or spiritual perfection. Trot off.”

“I won’t,” said Aaron.

“You must. If you’ve got a love–urge, then give it its fulfilment.”

“I haven’t got a love–urge.”

“You have. You want to get excited in love. You want to be carried away in love. You want to whoosh off in a nice little love whoosh and love yourself. Don’t deny it. I know you do. You want passion to sweep you off on wings of fire till you surpass yourself, and like the swooping eagle swoop right into the sun. I know you, my love–boy.”

“Not any more—not any more. I’ve been had too often,” laughed Aaron.

“Bah, it’s a lesson men never learn. No matter how sick they make themselves with love, they always rush for more, like a dog to his vomit.”