.
Fortunately, I know a nice woman who'll help us through; only, darling,
I'm awfully afraid it's beastly wrong for you. I mean I can't explain
properly; but if I let you go now, it would be pretty sickening. But
you'd get away; and if you stay, I'll do the best I can but we shall get
mixed up so that you'll find it harder to shake me off. You see, you're
awfully young; there are chances ahead of you, awfully decent other
chaps, marriage--"

"And you," she whispered--"you?"

"Oh, it doesn't matter a damn about me either way," he explained
carefully. "I'm stuck. But it isn't really fair of me to let you stay.
You don't understand, but it simply isn't fair."

Claire looked reproachfully at him.

"If I don't want you to be fair," she said, "you oughtn't to want to
be--not more than I do, I mean. Besides--Oh, Winn, I do know about when
I go! That's why I _can't_ go till we've been happy, awfully happy,
_first_. Don't you see, if I went now, there'd be nothing to look back
on but just your being hurt and my being hurt; and I want happiness! Oh,
Winn, I want happiness!"

That was the end of it. He took her in his arms and promised her
happiness.

PART III

CHAPTER XXIII

It seemed incredible that they should be happy, but from the first of
their fortnight to the last they were increasingly, insanely happy.
Everything ministered to their joy; the unstinted blue and gold of the
skies, the incommunicable glee of mountain heights, their blind and
eager love.

There was no future. They were on an island cut off from all to-morrows;
but they were together, and their island held the fruits of the
Hesperides.

They lived surrounded by light passions, by unfaithfulnesses that had
not the sharp excuses of desire, bonds that held only because they would
require an effort to break and bonds that were forged only because it
was easier to pass into a new relation than to continue in an old one.
Their solid and sober passion passed through these light fleets of
pleasure-boats as a great ship takes its unyielding way toward deep
waters.

Winn was spared the agony of foresight; he could not see beyond her
sparkling eyes; and Claire was happy, exultantly, supremely happy, with
the reckless, incurious happiness of youth.

It was terrible to see them coming in and out with their joy. Their
faces were transfigured, their eyes had the look of sleep-walkers, they
moved as through another world. They had only one obse