"It's to be something you're merely to suffer?"

"Well, say to wait for--to have to meet, to face, to see suddenly break
out in my life; possibly destroying all further consciousness, possibly
annihilating me; possibly, on the other hand, only altering everything,
striking at the root of all my world and leaving me to the consequences,
however they shape themselves."

She took this in, but the light in her eyes continued for him not to be
that of mockery. "Isn't what you describe perhaps but the expectation--or
at any rate the sense of danger, familiar to so many people--of falling
in love?"

John Marcher thought. "Did you ask me that before?"

"No--I wasn't so free-and-easy then. But it's what strikes me now."

"Of course," he said after a moment, "it strikes you. Of course it
strikes _me_. Of course what's in store for me may be no more than that.
The only thing is," he went on, "that I think if it had been that I
should by this time know."

"Do you mean because you've _been_ in love?" And then as he but looked
at her in silence: "You've been in love, and it hasn't meant such a
cataclysm, hasn't proved the great affair?"

"Here I am, you see. It hasn't been overwhelming."

"Then it hasn't been love," said May Bartram.