"You do not love me, that is so, is it not?" she asked.
"I am not in love with you, no. That is all spent. If you were any other woman I would lie to you. But it seems to me it matters very little whether I am or not. It is not that I feel I cannot love, but as though I had got through it and out the other side. . . ."
"No, it does not matter," said Candide. "What matters is that I can give to you and you to me. We will make life, you and I."
"Yes," agreed Bernardy, "we will make life," and as his arms went round her and his lips found hers everything that had puzzled him fell naturally into its place. He had always created in his verse, but it was for this his mother had borne him, it was this that the old woman in the church had meant, it was for this that the woman at his side had waited. It mattered very little that he himself would not live to see the life he made, the chief thing was to create, and he saw life as the greatest gift man could make to God.
THE MASK
When Vashti Bath was "led out" by the two most eligible young men in the village, the other women spoke their minds pretty freely on the subject; and when she progressed to that further stage known as "arm-a-crook," and still refrained from making the fateful choice, comment waxed bitter. The privilege of proposal belongs in Cornwall to that sex commonly called "the weaker"—a girl goes through the various stages of courtship conducted out of doors, and if she decides to marry the young man, asks him to "step in" one evening when he has seen her home, after which the engagement is announced. Vashti, in the most brazen way, was sampling two suitors at a time, and those two the most coveted men in Perran-an-zenna, and therein lay the sting for the women-folk.