"Why not?" I cried. "Even now. Why not run away with me, throw our two lives together? Do as lovers have dared to do since the beginning of things! Let us go somewhere together——"
"But Stephen," she asked softly, "where?"
"Anywhere!"
She spoke as an elder might do to a child. "No! tell me where—exactly. Where would it be? Where should we go? How should we live? Tell me. Make me see it, Stephen."
"You are too cruel to me, Mary," I said. "How can I—on the spur of the moment—arrange——?"
"But dear, suppose it was somewhere very grimy and narrow! Something—like some of those back streets I came through to get here. Suppose it was some dreadful place. And you had no money. And we were both worried and miserable. One gets ill in such places. If I loved you, Stephen—I mean if you and I—if you and I were to be together, I should want it to be in sunshine, I should want it to be among beautiful forests and mountains. Somewhere very beautiful...."
"Why not?"
"Because—to-day I know. There are no such places in the world for us. Stephen, they are dreams."
"For three years now," I said, "I have dreamed such dreams.