It gave her an odd little thrill of pleasure when Tommy propounded his theory of the perfect focal adjustment of the good in their natures. When he implicitly gave her rank as angel she was deeply moved. So she stretched out her hand and touched him and said “Thank you.”
“You said nothing about my proposal to stay here for ever,” he remarked, after a while.
“I’m quite ready,” she replied absently. “Why shouldn’t we?”
Tommy pointed out a white château that flashed through the greenery of the hill behind the cathedral.
“That’s the place we’ll take. We’ll fill it with books—chiefly sermons, and flowers—chiefly poppies, and we’ll smoke hashish instead of tobacco, and we’ll sleep and paint dream-pictures all the rest of our lives.”
“I suppose you can’t conceive life—even a dream-life—without pictures to paint in it?”
“Not exactly,” said he. “Can you?”
“I shouldn’t be painting pictures in my dream-life.”
“What would you be doing?”
But Clementina did not reply. She looked at the brave old sentinel fort glowing red in the splendour of the westering sun. Tommy continued—“I’m sure you would be painting. How do you think a musician could face an existence without music? or a golfer without golf?” and he broke into his fresh laugh. “I wonder what dream-golf would be like? It would be a sort of mixed arrangement, I guess, with stars for balls and clouds for bunkers and meads of asphodels for putting greens.” He suddenly lifted his hands, palm facing palm, and looked through them at the framed picture. “Clementina dear, if I don’t get that old Tour de la Bâtie with the sunset on it, I’ll die. It will take eternity to get it right, and that’s why we must stay here for ever.”