‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We shall come back. They all do.’
‘What do you mean?’ he demanded.
‘Thousands have done what we are going to do,’ I said. ‘And all of them have thought that their own case was different from the other cases.’
‘Ah!’
‘And a few have been happy. A few have not regretted the price. A few have retained the illusion.’
‘Illusion? Dearest girl, why do you talk like this?’
I could see that my heart’s treasure was ruffled. He clasped my hand tenaciously.
‘I must not hide from you the kind of woman you have chosen,’ I answered quietly, and as I spoke a hush fell upon my amorous passion. ‘In me there are two beings—myself and the observer of myself. It is the novelist’s disease, this duplication of personality. When I said illusion, I meant the supreme illusion of love. Is it not an illusion? I have seen it in others, and in exactly the same way I see it in myself and I see it in you. Will it last?—who knows? None can tell.’
‘Angel!’ he expostulated.
‘No one can foresee the end of love,’ I said, with an exquisite gentle sorrow. ‘But when the illusion is as intense as mine, as yours, even if its hour is brief, that hour is worth all the terrible years of disillusion which it will cost. Darling, this precious night alone would not be too dear if I paid for it with the rest of my life.’