Resting his chin on his hands, he gazed beyond the towering pillars, as if in the attempt to throw a loop around the future and pull it into his line of vision.
“Knowledge of each other, worst of all. Knowledge that is bound to widen, and each day lick up a little more of the unknown territory, till none remains. I shall fight hard not to know you, Peter; not to anticipate your attitude, or expect your unexpectedness, or follow too confidently and without trepidation your mental twists and turns. But it’s a losing fight. And one day we shall experience a sensation of things commonplace, the tingle gone from them.”
“We won’t tell....”
“No, we won’t tell; we’ll try and whip up by artificial means. I might marry you in that mood—from a sort of desperation at having pushed beyond desire. There are no hills and no stars in the country that lies beyond desire. I think, seeing it, one of us will make a half-hearted attempt to break. But too late to glory in the break; it will merely be odious and necessary, with the past already spoiled, and the future rather bleak; a break complicated by entanglements and—oh, other people! So we shall drift together again, as a matter of habit, somewhat ashamed of ourselves——”
Peter was seeing it now: “You will begin to take me for granted, and not strain to please me. And I—I might possibly become exacting——”
“That phase would pass as well. We should grow older, more comfortable, wonder what the uneasiness had all been about, and the sense of loss. Impulse would slip away and topsy-turvydom and conceit”—Stuart waxed pathetic at the contemplated loss of his insufferable bumptiousness,—“and, sane together, we will wonder we could ever have been mad together. If I must age to sanity, damn it! I’ll face the process alone.”
“You won’t remember ... but I shall, on anniversaries. I hate dates, but I can’t break them of their meaning—that’s my sex coming through. Anniversaries ... when I shall have known you a year—two years—three—Stuart, I’m frightened of the years; I want to be meeting you again for the first time.”
“We haven’t come to that yet. But when we do—the world may label me a brute or you a jilt; they may expect you to cling, or me to reproach; they may talk of the steady affection which grows and subsists upon a durable basis of mutton-fat,—but when we touch top, Peter, as we two shall do simultaneously, because we are level, then it’s: ‘Thanks for what you’ve given me, and good-bye,’ proudly and cleanly. I never thought I should meet the genius of life who could do that.” And he repeated softly his tribute: “You are a genius of life, Peter....”
Then, fearful of an imposed descent from the clear heights, he gave a rapid exhibition of his own unprompted skill at banister-sliding: “Eleven times two is twenty-two!” he recited, awestruck, catching sight of figures roughly scrawled in white chalk on the pillars opposite; “eleven times three is thirty-three! O, far-reaching hand of education——”