"Ned! Ned! I know. But do this great thing for me! Shut your eyes and your ears. Forget yesterday, think there will be no to-morrow. Hold this one moment! Give me my one hour!"
She pleaded as if for life, her body vibrating, her eyes beseeching him; and his answer was to press her hand harder against his lips, and to kiss it fervently. He gave no sign of the struggle within him—the doubt that encompassed him. Something had been demanded of him, and he gave it loyally.
"There was no yesterday, there will be no to-morrow!" he said. "But to-day is ours!"
It was the perfect word, spoken perfectly; Maxine's eyes drooped in supreme content, her lips curled like a pleased child's.
"Ah, but God is good!" she said, and with a child's supreme sweetness, she lifted her face for his kiss.
CHAPTER XL
THE hour was sped, the day past; night, with its dark wings, covered the eastern sky and, one by one, the stars came forth—stars that gleamed like new silver in the light sharpness of the September air.
Having closed eyes to the world at the Pré Catelan, Maxine and Blake had lengthened the coil of their dream as the day waxed. Three o'clock had seen them driving into the heart of the Bois, and late afternoon had found them wandering under the formal, interlaced trees in the gardens of the Petit Trianon. At Versailles they dined, falling a little silent over their meal, for neither could longer hold at bay the sense that events impended—that all paths, however devious, however touched by the enchanter's wand, lead back by an unalterable law to the world of realities.