“Funny, I never thought of that,” Margaret said, more cheerfully. “It might work out that way. Of course, it is cowardly in a way, but after all, there’s little sense to being brave in the lions’ den and getting devoured. It might work out fine, if you’re both certain your love’s going to last. Somehow or other, it’s hard for me to believe in a permanent love. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed it in any of the people around me. Are you sure you’re not just in a sentimental dream, Blanche?”
Blanche reflected for a while.
“Well, ’f we’re both making a mistake, we’ll be happy, anyway, till we find it out,” she said at last. “Good Lord, ’f you never take any risks in life, why then you’ll be sad all the time, and you won’t have any happiness at all, no matter how short it is!”
“Yes, I agree with you there,” Margaret answered, with a sigh.
They fell into a discussion of the practical details of Blanche’s possible departure, and the money that would be required, and the difficulty of earning a living in Europe, both trying to lose themselves in a bright animation. When Blanche parted with Margaret, a little after midnight, she felt more confident, and almost light-hearted. After all, if two human beings were wise, and brave, and forever alert, they simply couldn’t be separated from each other, no matter what the dangers were.
The mood remained with her and grew more intense each day, and when she rang Starling’s bell at the end of the week, she was almost fluttering with hope and resolution. For the first hour they did little more than remain in each other’s arms, in a daze and maze of kisses, sighs, and simple, reiterated love words. To Starling, huge violins and cornets were ravishing the air of the room, and the street sounds outside, floating in through an open window, were only the applause of an unseen audience. After all, only times like this gave human beings any possible excuse for existing—the rest of life was simply a series of strugglings, and dodgings, and tantalizings, and defeats. The least pressure of her fingertips provoked a fiery somersault within him, and the grazing of her bosom and face against his aroused revolving conflagrations within his breast. Blanche had become a stunned child, scarcely daring to believe in the compensations which were ruffling her blood to something more than music, and yet desperately guarding them, incoherently whispering over them, endlessly testing them with her fingers and lips, lest they prove to be the cruellest of fantasies.
When Blanche and Starling had made a moderate return to a rational condition, they began to discuss their future.
“Don’t you see that we must run away, Eric, dear?” she asked. “We’ll just be crushed and beaten down, otherwise. My brother Harry, he’d never rest till he’d put you in a hospital—oh, but don’t I know him—and he might even try to do worse. I get the shivers when I think of it.”
Her words were an affront to his courage, and he said: “Listen, I can take care of myself—I’ve been through a pretty tough mill.”
“Of course you can, but they wouldn’t fight fair,” she answered, impatiently. “They’d just proceed to get you by hook or crook. And that’s not half of it. Why, I can just see ev’rybody turning their backs on us, ’r making nasty remarks, ’r trying to poison us against each other. We’ve just got to run away and live where nobody knows us!”