"We will not reproach each other, Harry."
"Why—what else do you do all day long but reproach me with your gloomy looks and your silence?"
"Well—end it if you can. Find some change in the life."
"Be gracious for a little, and listen to my plan. I have made a plan. Listen, Iris. I can no longer endure this life. It drives me mad."
"And me too. That is one reason why we should not desire to change it. Mad people forget. They think they are somewhere else. For us to believe that we were somewhere else would be in itself happiness."
"I am resolved to change it—to change it, I say—at any risk. We will leave Louvain."
"We can, I dare say," Iris replied coldly, "find another town, French or Belgian, where we can get another cottage, behind high walls in a garden, and hide there."
"No. I will hide no longer. I am sick of hiding."
"Go on. What is your plan? Am I to pretend to be some one else's widow?"
"We will go to America. There are heaps of places in the States where no English people ever go—-neither tourists nor settlers—places where they have certainly never heard of us. We will find some quiet village, buy a small farm, and settle among the people. I know something about farming. We need not trouble to make the thing pay. And we will go back to mankind again. Perhaps, Iris—when we have gone back to the world—you will—" he hesitated—"you will be able to forgive me, and to regard me again with your old thoughts. It was done for your sake."