d. 'Of all the things we have now, we shall have nothing
but ourselves.'

'If I thought it was a sacrifice for you, I would go out and never see
you again.'

Noble fellow, proud now in the certainty that he sufficed for me! He
meant what he said.

'It is no sacrifice for me,' I murmured. 'The sacrifice would be not to
give up all in exchange for you.'

'We shall be exiles,' he went on, 'until the divorce business is over.
And then perhaps we shall creep back--shall we?--and try to find out how
many of our friends are our equals in moral courage.'

'Yes,' I said. 'We shall come back. They all do.'

'What do you mean?' he demanded.

'Thousands have done what we are going to do,' I said. 'And all of them
have thought that their own case was different from the other cases.'

'Ah!'

'And a few have been happy. A few have not regretted the price. A few
have retained the illusion.'

'Illusion? Dearest girl, why do you talk like this?'

I could see that my heart's treasure was ruffled. He clasped my hand
tenaciously.

'I must not hide from you the kind of woman you have chosen,' I answered
quietly, and as I spoke a hush fell upon my amorous passion. 'In me there
are two beings--myself and the observer of myself. It is the novelist's
disease, this duplication of personality. When I said illusion, I meant
the supreme illusion of love. Is it not an illusion? I have seen it in
others, and in exactly the same way I see it in myself and I see it in
you. Will it last?--who knows? None can tell.'

'Angel!' he expostulated.

'No one can foresee the end of love,' I said, with an exquisite gentle
sorrow. 'But when the illusion is as intense as mine, as yours, even if
its hour is brief, that hour is worth all the terrible years of
disillusion which it will cost. Darling, this precious night alone would
not be too dear if I paid for it with the rest of my life.'

He thanked me with a marvellous smile of confident adoration, and
his disengaged hand played with the gold chain which hung loosely
round my neck.

'Call it illusion if you like,' he said. 'Words are nothing. I only know
that for me it will be eternal. I only know that my one desire is to be
with you always, never to leave you, not to miss a moment of you; to have
you for mine, openly, securely. Carlotta, where shall we go?'

'We must travel, mustn't we?'

'Travel?' he repeated, with an air of discontent. 'Yes. But where to?'

'Travel,' I said. 'See things.