I began: “You can give all your money to it, my dear—” But I stopped at the bewildered look she turned on me.
“All?” she repeated. “But what should we have to live on, then?”
“We shall need no money to live on in Altruria,” I answered.
“Oh, in Altruria! But when we come back to New York?”
It was an agonizing moment, and I felt that shutting of the heart which blinds the eyes and makes the brain reel. “Eveleth,” I gasped, “did you expect to return to New York?”
“Why, certainly!” she cried. “Not at once, of course. But after you had seen your friends, and made a good, long visit—Why, surely, Aristide, you don't understand that I—You didn't mean to live in Altruria?”
“Ah!” I answered. “Where else could I live? Did you think for an instant that I could live in such a land as this?” I saw that she was hurt, and I hastened to say: “I know that it is the best part of the world outside of Altruria, but, oh, my dear, you cannot imagine how horrible the notion of living here seems to me. Forgive me. I am going from bad to worse. I don't mean to wound you. After all, it is your country, and you must love it. But, indeed, I could not think of living here. I could not take the burden of its wilful misery on my soul. I must live in Altruria, and you, when you have once seen my country, our country, will never consent to live in any other.”
“Yes,” she said, “I know it must be very beautiful; but I hadn't supposed—and yet I ought—”
“No, dearest, no! It was I who was to blame, for not being clearer from the first. But that is the way with us. We can't imagine any people willing to live anywhere else when once they have seen Altruria; and I have told you so much of it, and we have talked of it together so often, that I must have forgotten you had not actually known it. But listen, Eveleth. We will agree to this: After we have been a year in Altruria, if you wish to return to America I will come back and live with you here.”
“No, indeed!” she answered, generously. “If you are to be my husband,” and here she began with the solemn words of the Bible, so beautiful in their quaint English, “'whither thou goest, I will go, and I will not return from following after thee. Thy country shall be my country, and thy God my God.”