Do listen to me! I love
you. I shall always love you. It's because I love you that I won't go
down to become a dirty familiar thing with you amidst the grime. I've
given all I can. I've had all I can.... Tell me," and she crept nearer,
"have I been like the dusk to you, like the warm dusk? Is there magic
still? Listen to the ripple of water from your paddle. Look at the warm
evening light in the sky. Who cares if the canoe upsets? Come nearer to
me. Oh, my love! come near! So."
She drew me to her and our lips met.
III
I asked her to marry me once again.
It was our last morning together, and we had met very early, about
sunrise, knowing that we were to part. No sun shone that day. The sky
was overcast, the morning chilly and lit by a clear, cold, spiritless
light. A heavy dampness in the air verged close on rain. When I think of
that morning, it has always the quality of greying ashes wet with rain.
Beatrice too had changed. The spring had gone out of her movement; it
came to me, for the first time, that some day she might grow old.
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