You know what I told you about my father and mother. Oh, Neale,
it's horribly dangerous, loving anybody. I never wanted to. I never
thought I should. But now I'm in it, I see that it's not at all
unhappiness I'm afraid of, your getting tired of me or I of you . . .
everybody's so weak and horrid in this world, who knows what may be
before us? That's not what would be unendurable, sickening. That would
make us unhappy. But what would poison us to death . . . what I'm afraid
of, between two people who try to be what we want to be to each
other . . . how can I say it?" She looked at him in an anguish of endeavor,
". . . not to be true to what is deepest and most living in us . . . that
would be the betrayal I'm afraid of. That's what I mean. No matter what it
costs us personally, or what it brings, we must be true to that. We
_must!_"

He took her hand in his silently, and held it close. She drew a long
troubled breath and said, "You _do_ think we can always have between us
that loyalty to what is deep and living? It does not seem too much to
ask, when we are willing to give up everything else for it, even
happiness?"

He gave her a long, profound look. "I'm trying to give that loyalty to
you this minute, Marise darling," he said slowly, "when I tell you now
that I think it a very great deal to ask of life, a very great deal for
any human beings to try for. I should say it was much harder to get than
happiness."

She was in despair. "Do you think that?" She searched his face anxiously
as though she found there more than in his speech. "Yes, yes, I see what
you mean." She drew a long breath. "I can even see how fine it is of you
to say that to me now. It's like a promise of how you will try. But oh,
Neale, I won't _want_ life on any other terms!"

She stopped, looking down at her hand in his. He tightened his clasp.
His gaze on her darkened and deepened. "It's like sending me to get the
apples of Hesperides," he said, looking older than she, curiously and
suddenly older. "I want to say yes! It would be easy to say yes.
Darling, darling Marise, you can't want it more than I! But the very
intelligence that makes you want it, that makes me want it, shows me how
mortally hard it would be! Think! To be loyal to what is deepest and
most living in yourself . . . that's an undertaking for a life-time's
effort, with all the ups and downs and growths of life. And then to try
to know what is deepest and most living in another . .