“I do not despise you. I hardly know what I felt for you five weeks ago. But I have only sympathy for you now—and love! You must let me do the fighting. It will knit us the more closely—”
“It would wear me out, kill me, knowing that you were watching my struggles, no matter how lovingly. Besides, I know myself; my moods are unbearable at such times. I cannot control my temper. Before the year was over, we should have bickered our love into ruins. We could not begin over again. If you will do as I wish, I believe we can be happy. It is not long to wait—we are both young. Cannot you see that I am right?”
“I don’t want to leave you, not for a day again!”
“And I don’t want you to go! But I know that it is our only chance. If you marry me now, you will hate me before the year is over; and, what is worse, I shall hate you. The steamer sails to-morrow. Will you go?”
He hesitated, and argued, a long while; but finally he said: “I will go.”
“Don’t go all the way back to England. I should like to think you were in America; that would help me.”
“I will stay in New Orleans, and write by every steamer.”
“Oh, do, do! And if I do not write as regularly, you will understand. There will be times when I simply cannot write. But promise that, no matter what you hear, you will not lose faith in me.”
“I promise.” Involuntarily his mouth curled into a grin. The ghosts of a respectable company of extorted promises capered across his brain, as small irreverent ghosts have a habit of doing in great moments. But his mouth was close upon hers, and she did not see it.
An hour later she pointed outward. Far away, above the Eastern mountains, was a line of flame. The sun rose slowly. It smiled down upon the phantom ocean and flung bubbles of a thousand hues to the very feet of the mortals on the heights.