“Oh, yes, that is always what I have thought when I have read the American novelists’ attempts to portray what they call a ‘guilty love’. The only word that expresses it delicately is _liaison_, and the setting should be foreign as well. There is no background here. We are still under the drab shadow of Puritanism. I have heard it estimated that twenty-five thousand American women go abroad every year to indulge in a fleeting _liaison_ that gives them courage to endure the desperately material and commonplace life of this country for another year. You don’t understand that because you never have been in Europe. But Egypt--Italy--in Southern Europe anywhere--with its unbridled beauties of nature and its far more poetic beauties that centuries of art have given it--and a thousand years of love behind us--Oh, cannot you imagine how wonderful love would be? Do you think _I_ should ever want to come back?” Gregory was staring at her. “Do you mean,” he stammered, “that you would sacrifice your reputation openly--your future--do you care enough for that?” “I mean I love you so exclusively that I wish I had a thousand times more to sacrifice.” “But--but--there are always Americans travelling--and you know many Europeans----” “They are always easy to avoid. There are villas with walls, and pink flowers on top of the walls. And we could travel and see the wonders of art when the tourist season was over. Nor would I monopolise you. You could have the society of men of brains and achievement everywhere.” He continued to stare at her radiant wistful face. He had known that she loved him, but it had never occurred to him that she would be willing to give up the world for his sake. She was a proud woman, an aristocrat, she had an exceptional position everywhere; the great world when they parted stood ready to offer its consolations. She had unrolled a heavenly vision! His mind had revolted from debasing her to the status of what is euphemistically known in the West as “sporting women”; he also remembered the immediate disillusionments of his younger manhood and wondered if the hideousness of Butte had been responsible. The Mediterranean with its ancient civilisations flourishing and forgotten before the historic period, Egypt, full-grown offspring of a still more ancient but vanished civilisation--both called to that archæological instinct so closely allied to the geological, made him fancy he heard faint ancestral voices. Ora’s eyes were holding his, and her gaze was as powerful as his own. For the moment he no longer was a son of the newest section of the newest world. The turquoise waters of the Mediterranean spread before him, but he saw it alive with galleys---- He jerked his eyes away, folded his arms and stared downward. He must think rationally, not with vapours in his brain. It might be that he would be more than fool to sacrifice to any consideration the one chance for happiness in perfect union that life would offer him.