“What are you, then?”
“A woman who loves, Ralph—a woman who loves and who has remade her life—remade it for love and nothing but love.”
“Lady with the green eyes,” he said. “It’s a very serious thing to take a pledge like that!”
“Serious for me, but not for you. Be sure that if I offer you my life, I want no more of yours than you can give me. You will maintain around you this mystery which pleases you. You will never have to defend it against me. I take you just as you are; and you are the noblest and most fascinating thing I have ever met. I only ask one thing of you—to love me as long as you can.”
“For ever, Aurelie.” [[319]]
“No, Ralph: you are not the man to love for ever, nor even, alas! for very long. But however short a time it lasts, I shall have known such happiness that I shall have no right to complain. And I shall not complain. Till this evening. Come to the Theater Royal, you will find a box waiting for you there.”
They parted.
That evening Ralph went to the Theater Royal. They were playing “La Vie de Bohême” with a young singer newly engaged in the part of Mimi, Lucie Gautier.
Lucie Gautier was Aurelie.
Ralph understood. The independent life of an artist allows one to disregard certain conventions. Aurelie was free.