"I set out to make myself essential to him, mentally, physically, every way.... If he couldn't love me as man to woman, then he would have to love me as a tree trunk loves the creepers round it; I was going to cling all round him, but without his knowing. But I hadn't much time--just a month or perhaps six weeks. He was under orders for Africa, where he was going to take up a big administrative job, amazing work for so young a man; but, then, he was amazing. Just a few weeks I had, then, to make him feel that he couldn't bear life, in Africa or anywhere, without me. And, my dear! life didn't hold a more exquisite dream than that which brought a childish flush under my rouge, the very dream of dreams, of how, a few days before he went, he would take me in his arms and tell me that he couldn't bear to go alone, and that I must follow him, and together we would face all the scandal that would come of it.... I passionately wanted the moment to come when he would offer to risk his career for me; I wanted him to offer me his ambition, and then I would consider whether to give it back to him or not. But he didn't. I lost. "And I had seemed so like winning during that six weeks between that horrible lunch and his going away! London love affairs are always scrappy, hole-in-the-corner things, but we managed to live together now and again. And then, _mon Dieu_! he suddenly clung to me and said he wasn't seeing enough of me, that London was getting between us, and that we must go away somewhere into the country for at least a week before he left, to breathe and to love.... Wouldn't you have thought I was winning? I thought so, and my dreams were no more dreams, but actual, glorious certainties; he would beg me on his knees to follow him to Africa! "We went away ten days before he sailed, to a delightful little inn a few miles from Llangollen. Seven days we spent there. Wonderful, intimate days round about that little inn by the Welsh stream; we were children playing under a wilderness of blue sky, more blue than Italy's because of the white and grey puffs of clouds which make an English sky more human than any other; and we played with those toy hills which are called mountains in Wales, and we were often silent because there was too much to talk about.... And as we sat silently facing each other in the train back to London, I knew I had won. There were three days left.