“I’ll wait outside your door, on the mat, to keep interruptions from you.”
“I want to write ... to play the piano, to rest a great deal.”
“Give me your odd half-hours.” She gave him back her hand instead.
“Let’s pretend. We are to sail away into the unknown; to be happy ever afterwards. Where shall we go, Gabriel? Can we have a yacht?”
“I am not rich.”
“Pretend you are. Where shall we go? To Greece, where every stone is hallowed ground to you. All the white new buildings shall be blotted out and you may turn your back on the museum....”
“I shall only want to look at you.”
“No, on rocks and the blue Ægean Sea. No, we won’t go to Greece at all. You will be so learned, know so much more than I about everything. I shall feel small, insignificant.”
“Never. Bigger than the Pantheon.”
“We will go to Sicily instead, go down among the tombs.”