Emily smiled rather sadly. “It’ll vanish in due time,” she said. “Quite naturally, not by magic; it’ll vanish the way everything else vanishes and changes. But it’s here now.”
They gave themselves up to the enchantment. The candles burned, two shining eyes of flame, without a wink, minute after minute. But for them there were no longer any minutes. Emily leaned against him, her body held in the crook of his arm, her head resting on his shoulder. He caressed his cheek against her hair; sometimes, very gently, he kissed her forehead or her closed eyes.
“If I had known you years ago ...” she sighed. “But I was a silly little idiot then. I shouldn’t have noticed any difference between you and anybody else.”
“I shall be very jealous,” Emily spoke again after another timeless silence. “There must never be anybody else, never the shadow of anybody else.”
“There never will be anybody else,” said Gumbril.
Emily smiled and opened her eyes, looked up at him. “Ah, not here,” she said, “not in this real unreal room. Not during this eternity. But there will be other rooms just as real as this.”
“Not so real, not so real.” He bent his face towards hers. She closed her eyes again, and the lids fluttered with a sudden tremulous movement at the touch of his light kiss.
For them there were no more minutes. But time passed, time passed flowing in a dark stream, stanchlessly, as though from some profound mysterious wound in the world’s side, bleeding, bleeding for ever. One of the candles had burned down to the socket and the long, smoky flame wavered unsteadily. The flickering light troubled their eyes; the shadows twitched and stirred uneasily. Emily looked up at him.
“What’s the time?” she said.
Gumbril looked at his watch. It was nearly one o’clock. “Too late for you to get back,” he said.