“Shh!” she soothed him. “It was all very beautiful, our life together, Harry dear. Do you remember the holidays we had alone together? Do you remember Switzerland, and the great mountains that towered up behind our hotel, the snow upon their summits orange against deep blue in the first sunshine of the dawn? Do you remember how we used to wake up to look at them, and said it was just like the pictures, only more wonderful because we were actually there? Do you remember being among the great fields of narcissi, with blue gentian higher up, and reminding me that this was what you had promised to show me--those fields on fields of wild flowers which you had seen when you were a young student, years before? Do you remember the mountain stream with the big boulders where we ate sandwiches on a little patch of turf between the rocks, and you kissed me just as those other people came down the path? I remember--I remember how I went hot all over and yet was very proud and happy, because it was the first time that any one else had ever seen you loving me. You used to pretend--do you remember?--to be a little cold and distant toward me when we were in company, your dignity much too big to admit that you were in love.” “Don’t, Christine--don’t!” he murmured, the breath of a soundless sob escaping him in a broken exhalation. “If only we had had them--those holidays we meant to have!” “We did, dear,” she pursued. “We did have them. They’re all there--among our dreams. Look at them and you will see that they are true. The memory of them isn’t spoilt by anything that was not just right. Can’t you call them up again--the holidays we used to promise ourselves for the days when you were successful? Can’t you see them? Can’t you see that lovely time in Italy--the big blue lake, with the yellow houses and the red roofs close under the mountains and fairy islands in the middle? Can’t you see Venice and the black gondola in which we sat, urged forward like a living thing over the still water in which the palaces were reflected? Can’t you call back that wonderful night of silent peacefulness when, arms around each other, we leaned out over our balcony and listened to the gondoliers singing to each other under the stars? Don’t you remember the bridge in Florence where you stopped and said: ‘This is where Dante met Beatrice’--and we looked into each other’s eyes and knew that we, too, were a Dante and Beatrice, born for each other’s love? Don’t you remember, dear? Can’t you see them, all those wonderful years together, when you and I were young?” “Christine, Christine!” he murmured. “If only they were true!” “They are true, dear--they are true,” she asserted. “They are the truest things we have--the dreams of our souls which they will dream again and again long after we have no body. And not only holidays--our life together had work in it, too, didn’t it, dear?--hard and successful work. Do you remember the big case which made you famous?”