“Yes, you are,—can I forget it? And I’m yours—while you want me. But, Eppie, look at it; look at it straight. See the death that I will bring into the very heart of your life. See the children we may have; see what they would mean to you, and what they would mean to me: Transient appearances; creatures lovely and pathetic, perhaps, but empty of all the significance that you would find in them. I would have no love for our children, Eppie, as you understand love. We will grow old, and all the glamour will go—all the passion that holds us together now. I will be kind—and sorry; but you will know that, beside you, I watch you fading into listlessness, indifference, death, and know that even if I am to weep over you, dead, I will feel only that you have escaped forever, from me, from consciousness, from life. Eppie, don’t delude yourself with one ray of hope. To me your faith is a mirage. And it all comes to that. Have you faith enough to foresee all the horror of emptiness that you’ll find in me for the sake of one year of ecstasy?”
She had not moved while he spoke—spoke with a passion, a vehemence, that was like a sudden rushing into flame of a forest fire. There was something lurid and terrible in such passion, such vehemence, from him. It shook him as the forest is shaken and was like the ruinous force of the flames. She sat, while he held her, looking at it, as he had told her, “straight.” She knew that she looked at everything. Her eyes went back to his eyes as she gave him her answer.
“Not for the sake of the year of ecstasy; in spite of it.”
“For what, then?” he asked, stammering suddenly.
Her eyes, with their look of dedication, held him fast.
“For the sake of life—the long life—together; the life without the glamour, when my faith may altogether infect you.”
“You believe, Eppie, that you are so much stronger than I?”
“It’s not that I’m strong; but life is stronger than anything; life is the only reality. I am on the winning side.”
“So you will hope?”
“Hope! Of course I hope. You could never make me stop hoping—not even if you broke my heart. You may call it a mirage if you like—that’s only a word. I’ll fill your trance with my mirage, I’ll flood your whiteness with my color, and, God grant, you will feel life and know that you are at last awake. You are right—life is endless contest, endless pain; it’s only at that price that we can have it; but you will know that it’s worth the price. I see it all, Gavan, and I accept. I accept not only the certainty of my own suffering, but the certainty of yours.”