But he soon
found that he was not strong enough to keep to it. His jealousy was a
devouring fire, and he could not conceal it. Domini, he described to me
minutely the effect of jealousy in a human heart. I had never imagined
what it was, and, when he described it, I felt as if I looked down into
a bottomless pit lined with the flames of hell. By the depth of that pit
I measured the depth of his passion for this woman, and I gained an idea
of what human love--not the best sort of human love, but still genuine,
intense love of some kind--could be. Of this human love I thought at
night, putting it in comparison with the love God's creature can have
for God. And my sense of loneliness increased, and I felt as if I had
always been lonely. Does this seem strange to you? In the love of God
was calm, peace, rest, a lying down of the soul in the Almighty arms. In
the other love described to me was restlessness, agitation, torture, the
soul spinning like an atom driven by winds, the heart devoured as by a
disease, a cancer. On the one hand was a beautiful trust, on the other
a ceaseless agony of doubt and terror.
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