"In short," said he, "I shall have to give it up, after all, just because it's too big for me. I can only say that it's beautiful and unspeakably remote from the world, and that I think I should like to go back to Vavau and stay a long time, and let the rest of the world go hang."
Mlle. O'Hara stared across the park of La Lierre with wide and shadowy eyes, and her lips trembled a little.
"Oh, I want to go there!" she cried again. "I want to go there—and rest—and forget everything!"
She turned upon him with a sudden bitter resentment.
"Why do you tell me things like that?" she cried. "Oh yes, I know. I asked you, but—— Can't you see?
"To hide oneself away in a place like that!" she said. "To let the sun warm you and the trade winds blow away—all that had ever tortured you! Just to rest and be at peace!"
She turned her eyes to him once more.
"You needn't be afraid that you have failed to make me see your island! I see it. I feel it. It doesn't need many words. I can shut my eyes, and I am there. But it was a little cruel. Oh, I know, I asked for it.
"It's like the garden of the Hesperides, isn't it?"
"Very like it," said Ste. Marie, "because there are oranges—groves of them. (And they were the golden apples, I take it.) Also it is very far away from the world, and the people live in complete and careless ignorance of how the world goes on. Emperors and kings die, wars come and go; but they hear only a little faint echo of it all, long afterwards, and even that doesn't interest them."