'Freedom, Julian! romance! The world before us, to roam at will; fairs to dance at; strange people to consort with, to see the smile in their eyes, and the tolerant "Lovers!" forming on their lips. To tweak the nose of Propriety, to snatch away the chair on which she would sit down! Who in their senses would harness the divine courser to a mail-cart?' She seemed to him lit by an inner radiance, that shone through her eyes and glowed richly in her smile. 'Vagabond!' he said. 'Is life to be one long carnival?' 'And one long honesty. I'll own you before the world--and court its disapproval. I'll release you--no, I'll leave you--when you tire of me. I wouldn't clip love's golden wings. I wouldn't irk you with promises, blackmail you into perjury, wring from you an oath we both should know was made only to be broken. We'll leave that to middle-age. Middle-age--I have been told there is such a thing? Sometimes it is fat, sometimes it is wan, surely it is always dreary! It may be wise and successful and contented. Sometimes, I'm told, it even loves. We are young. Youth!' she said, sinking her voice, 'the winged and the divine.' When he talked to her about the Islands, she did not listen, although she dared not check him. He talked, striving to interest her, to fire her enthusiasm. He talked, with his eyes always upon the sea, since some obscure instinct warned him not to keep them bent upon her face; sometimes they were amongst the vines, which in the glow of their September bronze and amber resembled the wine flowing from their fruits, and from here the sea shimmered, crudely and cruelly blue between those flaming leaves, undulating into smooth, nacreous folds; sometimes they were amongst the rocks on the lower levels, on a windier day, when white crests spurted from the waves, and the foam broke with a lacy violence against the island at the edge of the green shallows; and sometimes, after dusk, they climbed to the olive terraces beneath the moon that rose through the trees in a world strangely gray and silver, strangely and contrastingly deprived of colour. He talked, lying on the ground, with his hands pressed close against the soil of Aphros. Its contact gave him the courage he needed.... He talked doggedly; in the first week with the fire of inspiration, after that with the perseverance of loyalty. These monologues ended always in the same way. He would bring his glance from the sea to her face, would break off his phrase in the middle, and, coming suddenly to her, would cover her hair, her throat, her mouth, with kisses. Then she would turn gladly and luxuriously towards him, curving in his arms, and presently the grace of her murmured speech would again bewitch him, until upon her lips he forgot the plea of Aphros.