"Others for you!" she murmured. "You have pitched your tent. I came here only as a wanderer."
"But scarcely a month ago," he exclaimed, "you too—"
"Don't!" she interrupted. "A month ago it seemed to me possible that I might live here always. I felt myself growing young again. I believed that I had severed all the ties which bound me to the days which have gone before. I was wrong. It was the sort of folly which comes to one sometimes, the sort of folly for which one pays."
His face was almost white in the moonlight. His deep-set grey eyes were fixed upon her.
"You were content—a month ago," he said. "You have been in London for two days, and you have come back a changed woman. Why must you think of leaving this place? Why need you go at all?"
"My friend," she said, softly, "I think that you know why. It is very beautiful here, and I have never been happier in all my life. But one may not linger all one's days in the pleasant places. One sleeps through the nights and is rested, but the days—ah, they are different."
"I cannot reason with you," he said. "You are too vague. Yet—you say that you have been contented here."
"I have been happy," she murmured.
"Then you must speak more plainly," he insisted, a note of passion throbbing in his hoarse tones. "I ask you again—why do you talk of going back, like a city slave whose days of holiday are over? What is there in the world more beautiful than the gifts the gods shower on us here? We have the sun, and the sea, and the wind by day and by night—this! It is the flower garden of life. Stay and pluck the roses with me."
"Ah, my friend," she murmured, "if that were possible!"