"I'll promise it, I think—for a bargain. I'll lie by silence, in return for a promise from you."
"A promise—what is it, Callista?"
"Promise me that if I am acquitted, I may come to you, live with you—in marriage or not, it doesn't matter—love you and care for you so long as I can have you. Give me that, and then I will lie, I'll swear anything to save my life, I'll be such an actress—"
"Callista, I'm sixty-eight, old and fat and ugly and tired."
"Hush. Understand. It's you, you, you—the self in you, not old nor young nor anything but you. Promise me. My promise for yours. No other terms."
"I promise it."
"Now I can look up at you. Now I know that what Edith said is true: living is journeying, and love's a region we can enter for a while."
"Yes, a region that changes if only because we do ourselves. Some try to prevent that, I suppose. They want it to be a closed room thick with perfume and curtains drawn against all weather, against night and day."
"But when I come to you—you've promised it—I'll make it a region of summer, of morning and summer evening and every star at night."