"It's just the good, the exquisite things in life, that make me rebel against this life we are leading. It's because I've seen the streaks of gold that I know the rest for dirt. When I go cheating and scheming to my office, and come back to find you squandering yourself upon a horde of chattering, overdressed women, when I think that that is our substance and everyday and what we are, then it is I remember most the deep and beautiful things.... It is impossible, dear, it is intolerable that life was made beautiful for us--just for these vulgarities." "Isn't there----" She hesitated. "Love--still?" "But----Has it been love? Love is a thing that grows. But we took it--as people take flowers out of a garden, cut them off, put them in water.... How much of our daily life has been love? How much of it mere consequences of the love we've left behind us?... We've just cohabited and 'made love'--you and I--and thought of a thousand other things...." He looked up at her. "Oh, I love a thousand things about you," he said. "But do I love _you_, Marjorie? Have I got you? Haven't I lost you--haven't we both lost something, the very heart of it all? Do you think that we were just cheated by instinct, that there wasn't something in it we felt and thought was there? And where is it now? Where is that brightness and wonder, Marjorie, and the pride and the immense unlimited hope?" She was still for a moment, then knelt very swiftly before him and held out her arms. "Oh Rag!" she said, with a face of tender beauty. He took her finger tips in his, dropped them and stood up above her. "My dear," he cried, "my dear! why do you always want to turn love into--touches?... Stand up again. Stand up there, my dear; don't think I've ceased to love you, but stand up there and let me talk to you as one man to another. If we let this occasion slide to embraces...." He stopped short. She crouched before the fire at his feet. "Go on," she said, "go on." "I feel now that all our lives now, Marjorie----We have come to a crisis. I feel that now----_now_ is the time. Either we shall save ourselves now or we shall never save ourselves. It is as if something had gathered and accumulated and could wait no longer. If we do not seize this opportunity----Then our lives will go on as they have gone on, will become more and more a matter of small excitements and elaborate comforts and distraction...." He stopped this halting speech and then broke out again.