—"but in the morning, one can smile at one's fears. Trust me, Louise, and believe in me. All our future happiness depends on how we act just now."
"Our future happiness ... yes," she said slowly. "But what of the present?"
"Isn't it worth while sacrificing a brief present to a long future?"
She threw him a quick glance. "You talk like an orthodox Christian, Maurice," she said, and added: "The present is here: it belongs to us. The future is so unclear—who knows what it will bring us!"
"And isn't it just for that very reason that I speak as I do? If everything lay clear and straight before us, do you think I should bother about anything but you? It's the uncertainty of the whole thing that troubles me. But however vague it is, I can tell you one thing that will happen. And you know, dearest, what that is—the only ambition I have left: to make you my wife at the earliest possible moment."
She gazed at him meditatively.
"Why wouldn't you let me have my way at first?" he cried. "Why were you against it? We could have kept it a secret: no one need have known a thing about it. And I should never have asked you to go to England, or to see my people. Call it narrow, if you must, I can't help it; it's the only thing for us to do. Why won't you agree? Tell me what you have against it. Listen!" He knelt down and put his arms round her. "We have still a fortnight—that's time enough. Let us go to England to-morrow, and be married without a word to anyone—in the first registrar's office we find. Only marry me!"
"Would it make you love me more?"
She looked at him intently, turning the whole weight of her dark glance upon him.
"You!" he said. "You to ask such a thing! You with these eyes ... and this hair! And these hands!—I love every line of them ... You can't understand, can you, you bundle of emotions, that I should care for you as I do, and yet be able to talk soberly? It seems to you a man's way of loving—and poor at that. But if you imagine I don't love you all the more for what you have sacrificed for me—no, you didn't say that, I know, but it comes to the same thing in the end."