‘I trust her because I love her,’ said Staines.
‘And how did you come to love her?’
‘By trusting her, of course!’
‘You make a circular defence.’
‘Yes,’ the boy cried, ‘because I must! True feeling is always circular—either circular, or paradoxical—simply because its cause and its expression are two halves of the very same thing! Love cannot be reduced to a catalogue of reasons why, and a catalogue of reasons cannot be put together into love. Any man who disagrees with me has never been in love—not truly.’