“Do you feel very eager to get to England?” asked Brandon, after a long silence.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I know that there is sorrow for me there.”
“If our boat had been destroyed on the shore of that island,” he asked, in almost an imploring voice, “would you have grieved?”
“No.”
“The present is better than the future. Oh, that my dream had continued forever, and that I had never awaked to the bitterness of life!”
“That,” said Beatrice, with a mournful smile, “is a reproach to me for watching you.”
“Yet that moment of awaking was sweet beyond all thought,” continued Brandon, in a musing tone, “for I had lost all memory of all things except you.”
They stood in silence, sometimes looking at one another, sometimes at the sea, while the dark shadows of the Future swept gloomily before their eyes.