The arguments he had so carefully rehearsed were all forgotten; nothing left but an incoherent pleading.  Life without her was not life; and they had only one life for love—­one summer.  It was all dark where she was not—­the very sun itself was dark.  Better to die than to live such false, broken lives, apart from each other.  Better to die at once than to live wanting each other, longing and longing, and watching each other’s sorrow.  And all for the sake of what?  It maddened, killed him, to think of that man touching her when he knew she did but hate him.  It shamed all manhood; it could not be good to help such things to be.  A vow when the spirit of it was gone was only superstition; it was wicked to waste one’s life for the sake of that.  Society—­she knew, she must know—­only cared for the forms, the outsides of things.  And what did it matter what Society thought?  It had no soul, no feeling, nothing.  And if it were said they ought to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others, to make things happier in the world, she must know that was only true when love was light and selfish; but not when people loved as they did, with all their hearts and souls, so that they would die for each other any minute, so that without each other there was no meaning in anything.  It would not help a single soul, for them to murder their love and all the happiness of their lives; to go on in a sort of living death.  Even if it were wrong, he would rather do that wrong, and take the consequences!  But it was not, it could not be wrong, when they felt like that!

And all the time that he was pouring forth those supplications, his eyes searched and searched her face.  But there only came from her:  “I don’t know—­I can’t tell—­if only I knew!” And then he was silent, stricken to the heart; till, at a look or a touch from her, he would break out again:  “You do love me—­you do; then what does anything else matter?”

And so it went on and on that summer afternoon, in the deserted room meant for such other things, where the two Frenchmen were too sympathetic, and the old official too drowsy, to come.  Then it all narrowed to one fierce, insistent question: 

“What is it—­what is it you’re afraid of?”

But to that, too, he got only the one mournful answer, paralyzing in its fateful monotony.

“I don’t know—­I can’t tell!”

It was awful to go on thus beating against this uncanny, dark, shadowy resistance; these unreal doubts and dreads, that by their very dumbness were becoming real to him, too.  If only she could tell him what she feared!  It could not be poverty—­that was not like her—­besides, he had enough for both.  It could not be loss of a social position, which was but irksome to her!  Surely it was not fear that he would cease to love her!  What was it?  In God’s name—­what?