"What do you think it means to me? Before I met you I was lonely and dissatisfied--you know what I was like! People talk of _joie de vivre_. I never knew it--never until this last year, since I have known you. When we have been together I've wanted nothing. I've been more than happy: I've been content. When we have been apart I have lived for the time when I should see you again. If you love me, how can you regret having given me the great joy of my life?" "If it could last! If it could last! But when it is only to bring a worse pain upon you, how can I help regretting? Oh, it is hard. To think what this moment means to other couples, and that we should be shut out. I feel like you--my own risk is nothing; it is the dread of its consequences for you that weighs, and he said--he said, that the worst time, the time of the worst danger lay ahead. Piers, how _can_ you love me with that knowledge in your mind? I thought when I told you, I honestly thought that it would stop every possibility of your caring." "Nothing could have stopped me. I told you then, as I tell you now, that you are the sweetest, the sanest woman I have ever met, and you are mine. I will never give you up; never to my dying day." "Piers, Piers, we have no choice." He drew her towards him, a hand on each arm; drew her roughly, passionately, his dark face twitching with emotion. "No! It is true. We have no choice. You have said it, and it is the truth. We belong to each other, and nothing that any one can say or do can alter that. For better or worse we belong; till death us do part. There is no choice. You can't get away--Vanna, does it strike you that we are doing a wrong, a wicked thing? We are killing our golden hour almost as soon as it is born. Those other lovers that you speak of, do they trouble their heads about marriage the first moment they are alone with their love? I don't believe they do. I don't believe it is even mentioned. It is enough joy, enough wonder, to realise the present. Can't we follow their example? Can't we be content just to be together--like this? Isn't the present rich enough to content us? It is more, a hundred times more than I ever dared to expect. You could not be so cruel, Vanna, as to take it from me." "If it could last! If it could last!" moaned Vanna once more. "Oh, Piers, it is heaven just to sit here, with my head on your shoulder, and your arms around me; but I must go away, far away to the other end of the world. We can't even be `engaged' like other people, and have the right to meet and be alone. How could we be engaged when we can never marry?"