If some way is not
found out of this horrible dilemma, I shall remember you as a
collector remembers a vase which a workman handed to him and which
slipped and was broken, or like a vase that was stolen from him; I
cannot find a perfect simile, at least not at this moment; my speech
is imperfect, but you will understand."
"Yes, I understand, I think I understand."
"If I do not get you, it will seem to me that I have lived in vain."
"But, dear one, things are not so bad as that. We need not be in Paris
for some days yet, and though I cannot ask you to my hotel, there is
no reason why----"
"Doris, do not raise up false hopes."
"I was only going to say, dear, that it does not seem to be necessary
that we should go straight back to Paris."
"You mean that we might stop somewhere at some old Roman town, at
Arles in an eighteenth-century house. O Doris, how enchanting this
would be! I hardly dare to think lest----"
"Lest what, dear? Lest I should deceive you?"
There was a delicious coo in her voice, the very love coo; it cannot
be imitated any more than the death-rattle, and exalted and inspired
by her promise of herself, of all herself, I spoke in praise of the
eighteenth century, saying that it had loved antiquity better than the
nineteenth, and had reproduced its spirit.
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