‘How long do you expect to be away,’ she asked.
‘The one wise thing,’ he answered, ‘I could do would be to stay away altogether.’
‘Ah, Paul,’ she half whispered, wreathing her arm through his, ‘there is your “fool’s dream” again. What do you mean by the “fool’s dream”? Haven’t we been happy for a time?’
‘Is it happiness,’ Paul asked, ‘to pay for a week’s emptiness and longing with one minute of delirium? Is it a happy thing to be so set on one unattainable hope as to be able, dreaming or waking, to think of nothing else? A man is not to be made happy by the life I live.’
‘Paul,’ she whispered, ‘what more can you ask than I have given you?’
‘Everything,’ he answered.
She drew her arm away lingeringly. He let it go, and for a minute they walked in silence side by side. They reached the avenue, and turned back again.
‘Can you tell me anything,’ she asked after this pause—‘do you care to tell me anything about your business in England.’
‘That’s simple enough,’ he answered. ‘I am within some few months of poverty, and I must get to work again. I have had a tremendous letter from old Darco, slanging me for breach of faith, and for having sent him a piece of intolerably bad work. I have deserved every word he has to say, and now I must make amends to him.’
‘You have not been fortunate in your work lately?’ she asked.