“Darling, we should not feel that way, ever,” she insisted. “Absence should be a stimulus to carry on. Otherwise——” she shrugged, stopped. But he knew she had meant death.
“All right,” he said, “but I want to tell you that in that event, I follow. And that’s that!”
He even borrowed her phrase to fix, irrevocably, their mutual positions. But without that the girl already knew,—deep, deep within her she had long known,—where the spring of their vital strength had its occult source. And more absolutely, more perfectly the knowledge made this man hers.
Truly there was nothing else in the world for her; no other rival she ever could brook that claimed the mind and strength that she was giving to this man—and must always give as long as mind and strength endured.
There still remained for the career of Eris an autumn, a winter, and a spring in California.
Work was to begin very soon. This knowledge sobered their leave-taking that night.
It tinged all their meetings and leave-takings, a little, during that otherwise perfect week in town.
She wore his betrothal ring when she went away.
Annan stood the separation for a month, then went after her.