"And what will it mean?" she asked. "Am I never to see you?"
"Often, often, I hope, but——"
"I'm not to talk to you about—about important things, things we both care about?"
I felt the absurdity of such a position. The abstract made concrete is so often made absurd.
"Then you won't come often; you won't care about coming." Something in her thoughts made her flush suddenly. She met my eyes and took courage. "You asked a good deal of me," she said.
I made no answer; she understood my silence. She rose, leaving me on my knees. I threw myself on the sofa and she went to the hearthrug. She knew that what I had asked of her I asked no more. There was a long silence between us. At last she spoke in a very low voice.
"It's only a little sooner than it must have been," she said. "And I—I suppose I must be glad that it's come home to me now instead of—later. I daresay you'll be glad of that too, Augustin."
"How are we to live, how are we to meet, what are we to be to one another?" she broke out the next moment. "We can't go on as if nothing had happened."
"I don't know."
"You don't know! Yet you're hard as iron about it. Oh, I daresay you're right; you must be. It's only a little sooner."