you to think of me as some one whom thousands desire and only you can
have. I want our love to be so intense that every day spent apart is
heavy with the longing for each other; every day together precious
because it will be a day nearer the awful coming of another separation.
Believe me, I am right. I have thought much about it. You have your
diplomatic career and your ambitions. You are proud. I have never asked
you to give that up to follow me. I would not insult you. In January you
will have a leave of absence, and we will be together for a few
wonderful weeks, and in May I shall return here. Nothing will be
changed." She extended her arm to where a faint red point still showed
on the unseen water. "And each night we will wait, as we have waited,
side by side, the coming of our little boat,--_notre p'tit bateau_"

"You are right," he said, placing his lips to her forehead. "I was
jealous. I am sorry. It is over."

"But I, too, am jealous," she said, smiling.

"You?"

"Of course--no one can love without being jealous. Oh, I shall be afraid
of every woman who comes near you. It will be an agony," she said, and
the fire in her eyes brought him more healing happiness than all her
words.

"You are right," he repeated.

He left her with a little pressure of the hand, and walked to the edge
of the veranda. A nervous, sighing breeze had come with the full coming
of the moon, and underneath him he heard the troubled rustle of leaves
in the obscurity, the sifting and drifting of tired, loose things, the
stir of the night which awakened a restless mood in his soul. He had
listened to her as she had proclaimed her love, and yet this love,
without illusions, sharply recalled to him other passions. He remembered
his first love, a boy-and-girl affair, and sharply contrasting it with a
sudden ache to this absence of impulse and illusions, of phrases, vows,
without logic, thrown out in the sweet madness of the moment. Why had
she not cried out something impulsive, promised things that could not
be. Then he realized, standing there in the harvest moonlight, in the
breaking up of summer, that he was no longer a youth, that certain
things could not be lived over, and that, as she had said, he too felt
that this was the great love, the last that he would share; that if it
ended, his youth ended and with his youth all that in him clung to life.

He turned and saw her, chin in the flat of her palm, steadily following
his mood. He