It sounds like an
empty phrase to say it, but if you will give me your life to take
care of, I shall only have one thought--to make you happy. Could
I succeed? That is what you have to ask yourself. You are not
happy now. Do you think that, if you stay on here, the future is
likely to be any better for you?"
She shook her head drearily.
"I believe," she confessed, "that I have reached the very limit
of my endurance."
He came a little nearer. His hands rested upon her shoulders very
lightly, yet they seemed like some enveloping chain. More than
ever in those few moments she realised the spiritual qualities of
his face. His eyes were aglow. His voice, a little broken with
emotion, was wonderfully tender. He looked at her as though she
were some precious and sacred thing.
"I am rich," he said, "and there are few parts of the world where
we could not live. We could find our way to the islands, like
your great writer Stevenson in whom you delight so much; islands
full of colour, and wonderful birds, and strange blue skies;
islands where the peace of the tropics dulls memory, and time
heats only in the heart. The world is a great place, Philippa,
and there are corners where the sordid crime of this ghastly
butchery has scarcely been heard of, where the horror and the
taint of it are as though they never existed, where the sun and
moon are still unashamed, and the grey monsters ride nowhere upon
the sapphire seas.
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