But Amory drew the hands away and glanced towards Alf and Jellies. Her low voice thrilled, as it were, with the first tones of a tragic scene. "Cosimo--no, I say. Not now. Not here. Perhaps never, and not anywhere. I'm almost sure it would be better not. I'm quite sure. It's not like that time the other day. I'd seen Dorothy then, you see, and she'd said that horrid thing. Mere pride made us go on as we had been doing in the face of the whole world. It was noble of you to offer it then--noble in a way, but quite impossible; and that's all past. Now our paths seem to lie in different directions, and we must follow them; it's a L--it's our duty. In the sense you mean, the sense of doing a sacred work, I was actually more your wife during that long and beautiful friendship than I can be now that you say you love me----" "Oh, I do love you!" Cosimo groaned, hearing these words of doom. "I do love you, Amory!" "Then I bid you love your duty more," Amory replied, with sweet mournfulness, placing her finger-tips ever so lightly for one moment on his shoulder, as it were an accolade. "Go, my Shropshire Lad, and do it. And I will try to do mine. Let that unite us, and let nothing gross and of the earth"--from the next bench came a resounding smack of two mouths placed together--"let nothing of the earth come near. So you will be my Cosimo, and I your Amory. Isn't that the higher and the better way?" "Oh, but, Amory, it's so hard! You know you've often said yourself that the physical relation has its proper place! How--how would the world go on without it?" "The world, Cosimo, goes on by the progress of ideas. Ideas can be in a sense our children, yours and mine. And these are born of no contact but the contact of the mingling spirits. I will write to you quite frequently--after a time, when I have forgotten a little; I will write such letters as you'd never, never receive from anybody else! And perhaps, after a number of years, we could meet again. When it was safer. I couldn't meet you until it was safe, and I must leave you now. Don't come with me, dear friend. I am not really going away; only the mortal part of me; everything else is yours, Cosimo. Good night----" "Amory! Amory!" "Don't make it harder, dearest thought--you _are_ thought of my thought----" Cosimo sat still. "Must that be all, Amory?" "Is it so little? Oh, you don't know! Have you forgotten what I told you about the Antinöus? You are all _that_ to me!" "Then----" Cosimo supplicated, his arms outstretched; but Amory turned away her head. "Ah no! You mean I kissed the Antinöus. But I daren't kiss you, my Shropshire Lad; I might fail utterly. And it would be no good your trying to kiss me; you'd hold my corporeal part for a moment, but think of all you'd lose! Would it be worth while, Cosimo?" She smiled, benign as a star, down on him. "Would it?"