We say that they can at the same time have conjugial love, meaning that they can keep this love hidden in themselves. For this love is not lost to the person who has it, but it lies dormant. The following are the reasons why conjugial love is preserved in the case of those who prefer marriage to having a concubine, and only take one for the reasons given above. This behaviour is not repugnant to conjugial love; such a person is not cut off from this love, since it is merely covered up, and this covering is taken away after their death.

(a) This way of having a concubine is not repugnant to conjugial love, as follows from the demonstration above that having a concubine in this way is not unlawful, when there are lawful, just and genuinely weighty reasons for it (467-473).

[2] (b) This way of having a concubine does not involve being cut off from conjugial love, for under the intervention, persuasion and pressure of lawful or just or genuinely weighty reasons, conjugial love associated with marriage is not cut off but temporarily interrupted. A love which is interrupted and not cut off still persists in the person concerned. This is much the same as when a person who enjoys his work is distracted from it by parties, theatre-going or travel; he still does not lose his love for his work. Or in the case of someone with a liking for fine vintages who, when he drinks ordinary wine, does not lose his taste for fine wine.

[3] (c) This way of having a concubine involves merely a covering up of conjugial love, because the love of having a concubine is natural, and the love of marriage is spiritual; and natural love covers up spiritual love, when this is blocked. The lover is unaware of this, because spiritual love by itself is not felt, but only through natural love. It is perceived as a pleasure containing blessedness from heaven; but natural love by itself is perceived only as a pleasure.

[4] (d) This covering is taken away after death, because then a person passes from natural to spiritual, enjoying a substantial body instead of a material one; and this allows him to feel natural pleasure coming from spiritual pleasure to the highest degree. I have learned that this is so from conversations with certain people in the spiritual world, including kings there who had concubines in the natural world for genuinely weighty reasons.