failed him? Surely die of disappointment and
despair. . . . He had little enough experience as yet of the toughness
of the human heart; how life bruises and crushes, yet leaves it beating.
. . . Then, from an unlikely quarter, he saw her coming.

They walked in silence down to the quiet rooms where the Turner
watercolours hung. No one, save two Frenchmen and an old official,
watched them passing slowly before those little pictures, till they came
to the end wall, and, unseen, unheard by any but her, he could begin!

The arguments he had so carefully rehearsed were all forgotten; nothing
left but an incoherent pleading. Life without her was not life; and they
had only one life for love--one summer. It was all dark where she was
not--the very sun itself was dark. Better to die than to live such
false, broken lives, apart from each other. Better to die at once than to
live wanting each other, longing and longing, and watching each other's
sorrow. And all for the sake of what? It maddened, killed him, to think
of that man touching her when he knew she did but hate him. It shamed
all manhood; it could not be good to help such things to be. A vow when
the spirit of it was gone was only superstition; it was wicked to waste
one's life for the sake of that. Society--she knew, she must know--only
cared for the forms, the outsides of things. And what did it matter what
Society thought? It had no soul, no feeling, nothing. And if it were
said they ought to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others, to make
things happier in the world, she must know that was only true when love
was light and selfish; but not when people loved as they did, with all
their hearts and souls, so that they would die for each other any minute,
so that without each other there was no meaning in anything. It would
not help a single soul, for them to murder their love and all the
happiness of their lives; to go on in a sort of living death. Even if it
were wrong, he would rather do that wrong, and take the consequences!
But it was not, it COULD not be wrong, when they felt like that!

And all the time that he was pouring forth those supplications, his eyes
searched and searched her face. But there only came from her: "I don't
know--I can't tell--if only I knew!" And then he was silent, stricken to
the heart; till, at a look or a touch from her, he would break out again:
"You do love me--you do; then what does anything else matter?"

And