"Yes," she said peacefully.
"And you really love me, Suzanne?"
"Oh, yes, but don't speak of it. Not tonight. You will frighten me again. Let us go back."
They strolled on. Then he said: "One kiss, sweet, in parting. One. Life has opened anew for me. You are the solvent of my whole being. You are making me over into something different. I feel as though I had never lived until now. Oh, this experience! It is such a wonderful thing to have done—to have lived through, to have changed as I have changed. You have changed me so completely, made me over into the artist again. From now on I can paint again. I can paint you." He scarcely knew what he was saying. He felt as though he were revealing himself to himself as in an apocalyptic vision.
She let him kiss her, but she was too frightened and wrought to even breathe right. She was intense, emotional, strange. She did not really understand what it was that he was talking about.
"Tomorrow," he said, "at the wood's edge. Tomorrow. Sweet dreams. I shall never know peace any more without your love."
And he watched her eagerly, sadly, bitterly, ecstatically, as she walked lightly from him, disappearing like a shadow through the dark and silent door.