_So_, fine sweetheart! I am going back with you to your city. We are not to be separated for a single day: perhaps not until the hour when you stand up before your people and swear to cleave to me only. I read that service yesterday, alone in the woods. Gods! how great it is! and yet not great enough. I would not have it "till death." It should cover the abyss--and hell. Do you remember to think with every breath you draw how a man loves you? how he would fain have you _his_ breath, that he might draw you into his very veins? Ah, what words are there for the telling? How poverty-stricken are we that there should be no way to make you mine save by swearing oaths! If I could give you my blood--but even that is less dear to me than one instant in your presence. If I could sacrifice the dearest thing I have--yet that would not be life itself; it would be you. Sacrifice you to love, to prove I love you! What wisdom were in that? [Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_] Dear,--Step back before it is too late. Do not come with us. No good lies that way. Why should you leave your happy island for the grimy streets? There is strange irony, too, in your setting off with us, such wayworn travelers. So might a spangled troup of weary players entice a sleepy child that had only known the lambs and birds, and lain on fragrant hay, to take some part in their ghastly mummery. What should be his fate? footsore, bewildered, to fall beside a wayside ditch, and gasp his breath out in the dusty fern. Go back! I'll none of you. I won't take the responsibility of your shining soul. Stay here, and write the story of your island. Tell the weary old world what the leaves whisper and how the flower-buds open. And folks will smile the vacuous smile of ignorant criticism, and say, "O, yes, we all knew it before!" Then perhaps your Virginia will come, and you may die in each other's arms. For you haven't the fortunate palm, my boy; you haven't the look of luck. They that make us have ordained you to grief, and I would for forty shillings that your slaughter came not through me. I will go to town. You shall send me your manuscripts, I will find a publisher, and we will write each other letters--so friendly, so friendly--and when you die with Virginia I will come to the woods and sit by your grave, and sing you little songs in remembrance of the love that was not to be mine. So fare you well; and I wish you only forgetfulness. [Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]