“Forever,” he answered with absolute assurance.
“And how long is this ‘forever’ to last?”
“Ah, well—of course—as long as we live. Do you believe in love beyond the grave?”
“Decidedly not!”
“Then, until death. And as I shall surely be the first to drop off, I shall have the best of it.” And he bowed as a courtier in Versailles, two centuries ago.
I concentrated my thoughts for a time. Behold me, sitting, clad in the raiments of ancient Greece, upon a bench of stone, my bare and shapely elbow resting on a balustrade.... Bending over the marble barrier, I look down, coldly, scrutinizingly, into the depths beyond—the depths of my soul. And behold, it is an abyss more than of infinite depth.—Alas! my ponderings, imaged thus, tell me but that in such an attitude, and thus arrayed, I look very handsome!
The sun is glaring high in heaven. Floating on the bright sea-waves is a light bark, with the prow shaped like a swan’s neck; and Witold is sitting in the bark. He smiles as he floats so lightly—floats on the sea of life. And I—I remain aimlessly gazing into those depths of my own being....
“Witold, you know that all this sort of thing must, sooner or later, come to an end?”
“How should I know that?”
“Not by experience?”