can you regret
having given me the great joy of my life?"

"If it could last! If it could last! But when it is only to bring a
worse pain upon you, how can I help regretting? Oh, it is hard. To
think what this moment means to other couples, and that we should be
shut out. I feel like you--my own risk is nothing; it is the dread of
its consequences for you that weighs, and he said--he said, that the
worst time, the time of the worst danger lay ahead. Piers, how _can_
you love me with that knowledge in your mind? I thought when I told
you, I honestly thought that it would stop every possibility of your
caring."

"Nothing could have stopped me. I told you then, as I tell you now,
that you are the sweetest, the sanest woman I have ever met, and you are
mine. I will never give you up; never to my dying day."

"Piers, Piers, we have no choice."

He drew her towards him, a hand on each arm; drew her roughly,
passionately, his dark face twitching with emotion.

"No! It is true. We have no choice. You have said it, and it is the
truth. We belong to each other, and nothing that any one can say or do
can alter that. For better or worse we belong; till death us do part.
There is no choice. You can't get away--Vanna, does it strike you that
we are doing a wrong, a wicked thing? We are killing our golden hour
almost as soon as it is born. Those other lovers that you speak of, do
they trouble their heads about marriage the first moment they are alone
with their love? I don't believe they do. I don't believe it is even
mentioned. It is enough joy, enough wonder, to realise the present.
Can't we follow their example? Can't we be content just to be
together--like this? Isn't the present rich enough to content us? It
is more, a hundred times more than I ever dared to expect. You could
not be so cruel, Vanna, as to take it from me."

"If it could last! If it could last!" moaned Vanna once more. "Oh,
Piers, it is heaven just to sit here, with my head on your shoulder, and
your arms around me; but I must go away, far away to the other end of
the world. We can't even be `engaged' like other people, and have the
right to meet and be alone. How could we be engaged when we can never
marry?"

"How could we not? If we cannot have the best thing, we must take the
next. Do all engaged lovers marry and live happily ever after? You
know they don't. They can't see what is waiting one day ahead. There
are a hund