“Ah! with all my heart I wish they didn’t matter. I wish nothing mattered, I ask for nothing better than to sit here with you, to go on living as we have lived this last week. But the time must come when we shall have to consider what we shall do next. Are we going back to London, or what?”
“It is August,” said he. “London in August——”
“What then? Shall we stop here?”
Then Evelyn was puerile.
“Of course, if you are tired of this,” he began.
But she let the puerilities go no further.
“Oh, don’t be a baby,” she said. “Ah, such a dear baby, I grant you! But, Evelyn, it is life we are living.”
Evelyn stroked his chin with a hugely pompous air.
“‘Life is real,’” he said, “‘life is earnest.’ Now, Madge, Poet Longfellow said that, therefore he must be right.”
“And so Painter Dundas agrees with him?” she said.