Meanwhile, Eleanor was saying, "You should not have spoken so curtly to Mr. Brent."
"If I can avoid it, I shall never speak to him again," Clare answered. "Don't let us talk of him. I did not bring you away to discuss anybody we have left behind, or anything of which we have talked before. We are to be like immortals—to forget the past and live only in the present."
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"Round to a point from whence we can overlook Claremont."
She said nothing more, and he led her to the eastern side of the mountain, where, near the verge of an almost precipitous descent, they sat down together under the shadow of a great gray rock. From this point the view was more extensive than any they had commanded before. The rolling country, with the sunset glory fading from it, lay like a panorama at their feet—shadowy woods melting into blue distance, streams glancing here and there into sight, fields rich with cultivation bounded by fences that looked like a spider's thread. To the left Claremont, seated above its terraces, made an imposing landmark. Behind it the moon was rising majestically in a cloudless sky. After they had been silent for some time, Clare turned and looked at his companion. "How beautiful you are!" he said abruptly. "I wish I had a picture of you as you sit there now. It would be worth everything else in the world to me. But perhaps, after all, the best pictures are those which are taken on the heart."
"You have forgotten," said Eleanor, trying to smile, "that we are going to eat the lotos in order to efface all pictures."
"Nay," said he. "I thought it was to enable us to forget everything but the present, and this is the present."
"But it will be the past in a little while," said she, "and we must forget it, like all the rest. Victor, we must forget! They say that all things are possible to resolution: let us resolve to do that."
For some time longer they sat silent. Then Clare said, with something like a groan, "Would to God I could die here and now, or else that there was some spell by which one could make memory a blank!"
"Let us try the lotos," said Eleanor. "See, I brought it as you told me."