"What's eternal?" asked the Chevalier.
"There is nothing eternal, my child," said Mlle. de Bergerac. "Nothing lasts more than a moment."
"O," said Coquelin, "I don't agree with you!"
"You don't believe that in this world everything is vain and fleeting and transitory?"
"By no means; I believe in the permanence of many things."
"Of what, for instance?"
"Well, of sentiments and passions."
"Very likely. But not of the hearts that hold them. 'Lovers die, but love survives.' I heard a gentleman say that at Chalais."
"It's better, at least, than if he had put it the other way. But lovers last too. They survive; they outlive the things that would fain destroy them,—indifference, denial, and despair."
"But meanwhile the loved object disappears. When it isn't one, it's the other."