"But if I can't? If you are ordered back to Metz?"
"Why should I be? But, if I am, promise me that you will try. If it is only an artifice, beguile me with it; I will believe in any promise."
"You don't need to ask me to promise; you know you don't need to make me promise. Wherever you are sent I will try to come. Wherever—do you hear? Do you think that that 'other' life is a dragon to eat me up? That it will be such bliss to me that I shall forget you completely? It isn't to be bliss, but work, hard work, and competition. It is the work that will keep me to Paris, not my happiness, my gaiety, my content with other faces. That would comfort me if I were listener, and you the speaker. But, Fanny, Fanny, I never met any one with such joy as you—it is you who change the forest and the inns we meet in, make the journeys a miracle. Don't show me another face. We have been in love without a cloud, without scenes, without tears. You have laughed at everything. Don't change, don't show me someone whom I don't know; not that sad face!"
"This then!" She held up a face in whose eyes and smile was the hasty radiance his fervour had brought her—and at sight of it the words broke from him—"Are you happy so quickly?"
"Yes, yes, already happy."
"Because I speak aloud of what I feel? What a doubting heart you have within you! And I believe you only pretend to distress yourself, that you may test whether I am sensitive enough to show the reflection of it. Come! Well—am I right?"
"Partly. But I need not think. Oh, I am glad your feeling is so like mine, and mine like yours! I will let the parting take care of itself —yet there is one thing about which I cannot tell. What does your heart do in absence, what kind of man are you when there is no one but Alfred, who will say: 'Forget her'?"
"What kind do you think?"
"While I am here beside you, you cannot even imagine how dim I might become. Can I tell? Can you assure me?"
Dim she might become to him, but dim she was not now as she besought him with eyes that showed a quick and eager heart, eyes fixed on his face full of enquiry, sure of its answer, feigning doubt that did not distress her.