A moment before, when, by their physical parting they had realised the strength of the bonds that held them apart this solution had not occurred to Sylvia. Now, critically and forlornly hopeful, it flashed on her. She felt, she almost felt--for the ultimate decision rested with him--that with him she would throw everything else aside, and escape, just escape, if so he willed it, into some haven of neutrality, where he and she would be together, leaving the rest of the world, her country and his, to fight over these irreconcilable quarrels. It did not seem to matter what happened to anybody else, provided only she and Michael were together, out of risk, out of harm. Other lives might be precious, other ideals and patriotisms might be at stake, but she wanted to be with him and nothing else at all. No tie counted compared to that; there was but one life given to man and woman, and now that her individual happiness, the individual joy of her love, was at stake, she felt, even as Michael had said, that nothing else mattered, that they would be right to realise themselves at any cost.
She took his hands again.
"Listen to me, Michael," she said. "I can't bear any longer that these horrors should keep rising up between us, and, while we are here in the middle of it all, it can't be otherwise. I ask you, then, to come away with me, to leave it all behind. It is not our quarrel. Already Hermann has gone; I can't lose you too."She looked up at him for a moment, and then quickly away again, for she felt her case, which seemed to her just now so imperative, slipping away from her in that glance she got of his eyes, that, for all the love that burned there, were blank with astonishment.
She must convince him; but her own convictions were weak when she looked at him.
"Don't answer me yet," she said. "Hear what I have to say. Don't you see that while we are like this we are lost to each other? And as you yourself said just now, nothing matters in comparison to our love. I want you to take me away, out of it all, so that we can find each other again. These horrors thwart and warp us; they spoil the best thing that the world holds for us. My patriotism is just as sound as yours, but I throw it away to get you. Do the same, then. You can get out of your service somehow. . . ."And then her voice began to falter.
"If you loved me, you would do it," she said. "If--"And then suddenly she found she could say no more at all. She had hoped that when she stated these things she would convince him, and, behold, all she had done was to shake her own convictions so that they fell clattering round her like an unstable card-house.
Desperately she looked again at him, wondering if she had convinced him at all, and then again she looked, wondering if she should see contempt in his eyes. After that she stood still and silent, and her face flamed.
"Do you despise me, Michael?" she said.
He gave a little sigh of utter content.
"Oh, my dear, how I love you for suggesting such a sweet impossibility," he said. "But how you would despise me if Iconsented."
She did not answer.
"Wouldn't you?" he repeated.
She gave a sorrowful semblance of a laugh.
"I suppose I should," she said.
"And I know you would. You would contrast me in your mind, whether you wished to or not, with Hermann, with poor Francis, sorely to my disadvantage."They sat silent a little, but there was another question Sylvia had to ask for which she had to collect her courage. At last it came.
"Have they told you yet when you are going?" she said.
"Not for certain. But--it will be before many days are passed.
And the question arises--will you marry me before I go?"She hid her face on his shoulder.
"I will do what you wish," she said.
"But I want to know your wish."
She clung closer to him.
"Michael, I don't think I could bear to part with you if we were married," she said. "It would be worse, I think, than it's going to be. But I intend to do exactly what you wish. You must tell me. I'm going to obey you before I am your wife as well as after."Michael had long debated this in his mind. It seemed to him that if he came back, as might easily happen, hopelessly crippled, incurably invalid, it would be placing Sylvia in an unfairly difficult position, if she was already his wife. He might be hideously disfigured; she would be bound to but a wreck of a man;he might be utterly unfit to be her husband, and yet she would be tied to him. He had already talked the question over with his father, who, with that curious posthumous anxiety to have a further direct heir, had urged that the marriage should take place at once;but with his own feeling on the subject, as well as Sylvia's, he at once made up his mind.
"I agree with you," he said. "We will settle it so, then."She smiled at him.
"How dreadfully business-like," she said, with an attempt at lightness.
"I know. It's rather a good thing one has got to be business-like, when--"That failed also, and he drew her to him and kissed her.
