“Give me one year of your life for the whole of mine, Will you? Come! Let us go away, let us forget—I don’t want to lie any more—I don’t want to belong to any one else. I can’t any more, now that I’m yours.”
She stood up with one bound. Behind the chapel, not far from them, the rock fell perpendicularly to the Aix road. She went up close to the edge, defying the empty air.
“Edith!” he cried, jumping up hastily.
She came back to him, more calm, and smiling.
“I love dizzy places, but I’ve more sense than that,” she said, coming back to her place beside him.
But it was only to begin again the worry about the future.
“Our secret is everybody’s secret now. My husband will know it soon. He suspects it already. He loves me in his way, but it’s a way that revolts me. I’m sure that he is spying on us. He’ll revenge himself somehow. He’ll manage it very deliberately, like everything he undertakes.”
“Listen, Edith. You must divorce him.”
“Divorce him, yes. I’ve thought of that. But suppose he should oppose me. And he will, too. And then a divorce always takes a year or two, perhaps more. It would oblige me to go and live with my people, away from you. To be always waiting, still two long years of seclusion: I should come out of it all quite old. I should be separated from you. From you, do you understand? I have thought it all over, you see. It’s impossible.”
They were silent a moment, and in the stillness that surrounded them as they leant against each other the deep calls of their two natures sounded. A rustling along the wall near them made them start.