our
columns. Our movement consolidated and spread. We should presently come
into power. Everything moved towards our hands. We should be able to get
at the schools, the services, the universities, the church; enormously
increase the endowment of research, and organise what was sorely wanted,
a criticism of research; contrive a closer contact between the press and
creative intellectual life; foster literature, clarify, strengthen the
public consciousness, develop social organisation and a sense of the
State. Men were coming to us every day, brilliant young peers like Lord
Dentonhill, writers like Carnot and Cresswell. It filled me with pride
to win such men. "We stand for so much more than we seem to stand for,"
I said. I opened my heart to her, so freely that I hesitate to open my
heart even to the reader, telling of projects and ambitions I cherished,
of my consciousness of great powers and widening opportunities....

Isabel watched me as I talked.

She too, I think, had forgotten these things for a while. For it is
curious and I think a very significant thing that since we had become
lovers, we had talked very little of the broader things that had once so
strongly gripped our imaginations.

"It's good," I said, "to talk like this to you, to get back to youth and
great ambitions with you. There have been times lately when politics has
seemed the pettiest game played with mean tools for mean ends--and none
the less so that the happiness of three hundred million people might be
touched by our follies. I talk to no one else like this.... And now I
think of parting, I think but of how much more I might have talked to
you."...

Things drew to an end at last, but after we had spoken of a thousand
things.

"We've talked away our last half day," I said, staring over my shoulder
at the blazing sunset sky behind us. "Dear, it's been the last day of
our lives for us.... It doesn't seem like the last day of our lives. Or
any day."

"I wonder how it will feel?" said Isabel.

"It will be very strange at first--not to be able to tell you things."

"I've a superstition that after--after we've parted--if ever I go into
my room and talk, you'll hear. You'll be--somewhere."

"I shall be in the world--yes."

"I don't feel as though these days ahead were real. Here we are, here we
remain."

"Yes, I feel that. As though you and I were two immortals, who didn't
live in time and space at all, who never met, who couldn't part, a