‘Ah,’ she cried, answering his low tones with a deep burst of feeling. ‘We have been together through the worlds. We are not strangers. That is what you mean. You have buried yourself in me, and I have buried myself in you. We belong to each other. We have always belonged together. There are only you and I in this white pale world. That is what real lovers are. Alone--alone together for ever and ever and ever. Nothing can ever break our solitude--nothing can put itself between us--if only we are honest with ourselves. ‘Isabel, what does it mean--this that we feel? What is it that we are?’ he asked, whispering as if in the presence of a sacred mystery. ‘Ourself,’ she answered triumphantly--‘ourself, awake, brought to life, welded together again. We have come out of a hundred ages. Do you suppose that we come together now for the first time? How do we know each other, then? This that we feel is the song of many dead souls calling in each of us to the many dead souls that have loved us in the other. We have been bound together since first we met in the far-away distance of things. Love is that. Love is never a new thing. Love is the oldest thing in the world. It has lived through a hundred thousand deaths of the body, and gathered strength and knowledge at every stage of its journey. It’s a jewel of a hundred thousand memories crushed together and crystallized into a pure sparkle of lights. It’s a chain of a hundred thousand links, each heavier than the last, and more golden. Kingston, the chain is round us and round us. Tie it tighter, tighter, for ever and ever. We will live everlastingly in this land of splendid bondage.’ ‘Isabel, what is it the wise people of the East say?’ answered Kingston, in the stupefaction of ecstasy. ‘They pledge themselves to one another for half a dozen lives or more. Isabel, that is what you mean. You and I are both bound together. We’ll plight our troth again now, far ahead into the future. For a score of existences, Isabel. Our love was not born a minute ago; it will not die to-morrow. It goes on and on, whatever bodies it takes to clothe itself. Our love is the only thing of us that goes on. And nothing can destroy it. It is ourselves. You are mine, Isabel, and I am yours--you are me, and I, you, not only now, in these shapes of ours, but through half a hundred more that are not yet born, Isabel. Isabel, what do words and talking matter? We cannot get away from each other; we are the same person. Now and always, Isabel. But we will never lose ourselves again; we must always recognise each other.’ ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘again and again and again. For ever and always. You have been trying to cut me, Kingston--_me_! trying to cut yourself.’ ‘You are chained to me, Isabel, and I to you! I will never break the chain at my end; you must never try to break it at yours.’ ‘No; we are always the same person henceforth. Why, there is no bond. We are too close together now even to be bound.’