"There was another feeling I had, upon which I have not insisted," he continued. "By my brother's project, I am to reside almost wholly abroad. Even the little stipend I have to offer you now is absorbed of course by the investment of my property in his trading capital, and marriage, till I have partly enriched myself, would be even more hopeless than at present. Say the interval were five years--and five years of separation!" "With happiness in prospect, it would soon pass, my dear Philip!" "But is there nothing wasted in this time? My life is yours--the gift of love. Are not these coming five years the very flower of it!--a mutual loss, too, for are they not, even more emphatically, the very flower of yours? Eighteen and twenty-five are ages at which to marry, not ages to defer. During this time the entire flow of my existence is at its crowning fulness--passion, thought, joy, tenderness, susceptibility to beauty and sweetness--all I have that can be diminished or tarnished, or made dull by advancing age and contact with the world, is thrown away--for its spring and summer. Will the autumn of life repay us for this? Will it--even if we are rich and blest with health, and as capable of an unblemished union as now? Think of this a moment, dear Fanny!" "I do--it is full of force and meaning, and, could we marry now, with a tolerable prospect of competency, it would be irresistible. But poverty in wedlock, Philip--" "What do you call poverty? If we can suffice for each other, and have the necessaries of life, we are not poor! My art will bring us consideration enough--which is the main end of wealth, after all--and, of society, speaking for myself only, I want nothing. Luxuries for yourself, Fanny--means for your dear comfort and pleasure--you should not want if the world held them, and surely the unbounded devotion of one man to the support of the one woman he loves, _ought_ to suffice for the task! I am strong--I am capable of labor--I have limbs to toil, if my genius and my present means fail me, and, oh, Heaven! you could not want!" "No, no, no! I thought not of want!" murmured Miss Bellairs, "I thought only--" But she was not permitted to finish the sentence.