“I do want to tell you things, nevertheless.”
“We’ll have, thank God! ten myriad days to tell each other things. When I think of it—”
“But these are things I want to tell you now!”
“I made a little song of it. Let me say it to you. I’ve no name for it yet. Epithalamy might do.
“Like him who stood on Darien
I view uncharted sea
Ten thousand days, ten thousand nights
Before my Queen and me.
“And that only brings me up to about sixty-five!
“A glittering wilderness of time
That to the sunset reaches
No keel as yet its waves has ploughed
Or gritted on its beaches.
“And we will sail that splendor wide,
From day to day together,
From isle to isle of happiness
Through year’s of God’s own weather.”
“Yes,” said his prospective fellow-sailor, “that’s very pretty.” She stopped short, full of things un-said. Pretty! Ten thousand days, ten thousand nights!
“You shall tell me your faults,” said Manning. “If they matter to you, they matter.”
“It isn’t precisely faults,” said Ann Veronica. “It’s something that bothers me.” Ten thousand! Put that way it seemed so different.