I read in an instant the thing she had thought to do. It was one
of those moments when one sees.

"'No!' I said.

"'No?' she asked, in surprise and I think a little fearful at
the answer to her thought.

"'Nothing,' I said, 'shall send me back. Nothing! I have
chosen. Love, I have chosen, and the world must go. Whatever
happens I will live this life--I will live for you! It--nothing
shall turn me aside; nothing, my dear one. Even if you died--even
if you died--'

"'Yes?' she murmured, softly.

"'Then--I also would die.'

"And before she could speak again I began to talk, talking
eloquently--as I could do in that life--talking to exalt love, to
make the life we were living seem heroic and glorious; and the
thing I was deserting something hard and enormously ignoble that it
was a fine thing to set aside. I bent all my mind to throw that
glamour upon it, seeking not only to convert her but myself to
that. We talked, and she clung to me, torn too between all that
she deemed noble and all that she knew was sweet. And at last I
did make it heroic, made all the thickening disaster of the world
only a sort of glorious setting to our unparalleled love, and we
two poor foolish souls strutted there at last, clad in that
splendid delusion, drunken rather with that glorious delusion,