"I like to hear that. Love isn’t meant to mope over. It’s the sort of thing to remember with praise and thanksgiving when it’s gone. When the loved one’s gone, I mean. When you come to think of it love’s a curious thing. It’s like a very sharp two-edged sword. You handle it so carelessly that it gives you scratches and cuts and wounds that are so deep that even when they heal they throb for years afterwards. I wonder how I should feel—if my love stopped. I think my life would stop too. I shouldn’t be brave enough to go on with things.... That doesn’t fit in very well with what I said just now about not moping, does it?" Chalfont answered her with a question of his own. "What is love like to you?" "To me? A burning, fiery furnace. All great waves beating on me and smashing me about." "Isn’t that passion?" "I don’t know. If it is it’s like that stuff everybody’s talking about—radium. It gives off heat and loses none." She remained lost in thought for a while. "Perhaps I should feel different if I were—married.... I dream of it sometimes." She was dreaming then. Chalfont saw it in her eyes. Her artlessness seemed a wonderful thing to him. "The odd thing is," she went on, "when I’m imagining that I forget all about the man. It’s like having a sort of marriage service all to yourself." "Tell me." "Oh, it’s silly.... I think of it to make me go to sleep instead of counting silly sheep. It makes me float off as if I were on a lovely cloud. First I hear the church bells ringing—quite loud, pealing; and my heart goes thumpetty-thump because I’m going to be married, which I shall never be in my life. It seems so important and grand. And then I dress. That doesn’t interest me very much; but I like the look of my face through the white veil. It’s misty, like a summer morning.... Then I’m in church—a great church, perhaps a cathedral, and as I go up the aisle it’s as if God is playing the organ, and I’m walking on all His stars." There was quite a wonderful look in her beautiful face. She seemed to have forgotten Chalfont. He kept quite still waiting for her to go on.