Gravitation
never decks itself in rainbows, nor does it vaunt its undoubted strength
in thunder. It is content to make little show, because it is very
strong; yet you have always to reckon with it. It is undemonstrative,
but it is always there. The love of Esther and Henry was like that. It
has made little show in this history, but few readers can have missed
its presence in the atmosphere. It might go for weeks without its
festival; but there it was all the time, ready for any service, staunch
for any trial. It was one of the laws which kept the little world I have
been describing slung safely in space, and securely shining.
It was, indeed, something like a perfect relationship,--this love of
Esther and Henry. Had the laws of nature permitted it, it is probable
that Mike and Angel would have been forced to seek their mates
elsewhere. As it was, though it was thus less than marriage, it was more
than friendship--as the holy intercourse of a mother and a son is more
than friendship. Freed from the perturbations of sex, it yet gained
warmth and exhilaration from the unconscious presence of that
stimulating difference.
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