Baruch was now in love. He had fallen in love with Clara suddenly
and totally. His tendency to reflectiveness did not diminish his
passion: it rather augmented it. The men and women whose thoughts
are here and there continually are not the people to feel the full
force of love. Those who do feel it are those who are accustomed to
think of one thing at a time, and to think upon it for a long time.
'No man,' said Baruch once, 'can love a woman unless he loves God.'
'I should say,' smilingly replied the Gentile, 'that no man can love
God unless he loves a woman.' 'I am right,' said Baruch, 'and so are
you.' But Baruch looked in the glass: his hair, jet black when he was a
youth, was marked with grey, and once more the thought came to him--
this time with peculiar force--that he could not now expect a woman
to love him as she had a right to demand that he should love, and
that he must be silent. He was obliged to call upon Barnes in about
a fortnight's time. He still read Hebrew, and he had seen in the
shop a copy of the Hebrew translation of the Moreh Nevochim of
Maimonides, which he greatly coveted, but could not afford to buy.
Like every true book-lover, he could not make up his mind when he
wished for a book which was beyond his means that he ought once for
all to renounce it, and he was guilty of subterfuges quite unworthy
of such a reasonable creature in order to delude himself into the
belief that he might yield. For example, he wanted a new overcoat
badly, but determined it was more prudent to wait, and a week
afterwards very nearly came to the conclusion that as he had not
ordered the coat he had actually accumulated a fund from which the
Moreh Nevochim might be purchased. When he came to the shop he saw
Barnes was there, and he persuaded himself he should have a quieter
moment or two with the precious volume when Clara was alone. Barnes,
of course, gossiped with everybody.
He therefore called again in the evening, about half an hour before
closing time, and found that Barnes had gone home. Clara was busy
with a catalogue, the proof of which she was particularly anxious to
send to the printer that night. He did not disturb her, but took
down the Maimonides, and for a few moments was lost in revolving the
doctrine, afterwards repeated and proved by a greater than
Maimonides, that the will and power of God are co-extensive: that
there is nothing which might be and is not. It was familiar to
Baruch, but like all ideas of that quality and magnitude--and there
are not many of them--it was always new and affected him like a
starry night, seen hundreds of times, yet for ever infinite and
original.