“Is that your whole answer, Mark? Everything is a lie; therefore, away with it! But the absence of any notion of what truth is to supersede the lies makes me distrustful.”
“You set reflexion above nature and passion. You are noble, and you naturally desire marriage. But that has nothing to do with love, and it is love and happiness that I seek.”
Vera rose and looked at him with blazing eyes.
“If I wished only for marriage, Mark, I should naturally make another choice.”
“Pardon me, I was rude,” he said in real embarrassment, and kissed her hand. “But, Vera, you repress your love, you are afraid, and instead of giving yourself up to the pleasure of it you are for ever analysing.”
“I try to find out who and what you are, because love is not a passing pleasure to me, but you look on it as a distraction.”
“No, as a daily need of life, which is no matter for jesting. Like Raisky, I cannot sleep through the long nights, and I suffer nervous torture that I could not have believed possible. You say you love me; that I love you is plain? But I call you to happiness and you are afraid....”
“I do not want happiness for a month, for six months--”
“For your life long, and even after death?” asked Mark, scornfully.
“For life! I do not want to foresee an ultimate limit. I do not and will not believe in happiness with a term. But I do believe in another kind of intimate happiness, and I want....”
“Yes, I know no other happiness, and I would scorn it if I knew it.”
“Good-bye, Vera. You do not love me, but are for ever disputing, analysing either my character or the nature of happiness. We always get back to the point from which we started. I think it is your destiny to love Raisky. You can make what you will of him, can deck him out with all your Aunt’s tags, and evolve a new hero of romance every day, for ever and ever. I haven’t the time for that kind of thing. I have work to do.”
“Ah work, and love, with happiness as an afterthought, a trifle....”
“Do you wish to build a life out of love after the old fashion, a life such as that lived by the swallows who leave their nest only to seek food.”
“You would fly for a moment into a strange nest, and then forget.”
“Yes, if forgetting is so easy; but if one cannot forget, one returns. But must I return if I don’t want to? Is that compatible with freedom? Would you ask that?”