"But, Michael, how can I marry you? I haven't told you anything really about myself."
"Foolish one, you've told me everything that matters in these two months of the most perfect companionship possible for human beings."
"Companionship?" she echoed, looking at him fiercely. "And cousinship, eh?"
"No, no, my dear, you can't frighten me any longer," he laughed. "Surely, telling things belongs to the companionship of a life together—love has no words except when one is still very young and eloquent."
"But, Michael," she went on, "all these nine years of mystical speculation, are they going to end in the commonplace of marriage?"
"It won't be commonplace, and besides, the war isn't over yet, and after the war there will be an empty world to fill with all we have learned. Ah, how poor old Guy would have loved to fill it with his Spanish castles."
"It seems wrong for us two up here to be so happy," Sylvia sighed.
"This is just a halcyon day, but there will soon be stormy days again."
"You mean you'll go back now to—" She stopped in a desperate apprehension. "But, of course, we can't live forever in these days of war between a blue sky and a blue sea. Yet, somehow, oh, my dearest and dearest, I don't believe I shall lose you."
Like birds calling to one another, in the green thickets far away two bells tinkled their monotone; and a small gray craft flying the white ensign glided over the charmed sea toward Samothrace.