Page:Ann Veronica, a modern love story.djvu/304



"I've got bad faults."

He shook his head slowly, smiling mysteriously.

"But perhaps I want to confess them."

"I grant you absolution."

"I don't want absolution. I want to make myself visible to you."

"I wish I could make you visible to yourself. I don't believe in the faults. They're just a joyous softening of the outline—more beautiful than perfection. Like the flaws of an old marble. If you talk of your faults, I shall talk of your splendors."

"I do want to tell you things, nevertheless."

"We'll have, thank God! ten myriad days to tell each other things. When I think of it—"

"But these are things I want to tell you now!"

"I made a little song of it. Let me say it to you. I've no name for it yet. Epithalamy might do.

"Like him who stood on Darien    I view uncharted sea     Ten thousand days, ten thousand nights     Before my Queen and me.

"And that only brings me up to about sixty-five!

"A glittering wilderness of time    That to the sunset reaches     No keel as yet its waves has ploughed     Or gritted on its beaches.

"And we will sail that splendor wide,    From day to day together,     From isle to isle of happiness     Through year's of God's own weather."

"Yes," said his prospective fellow-sailor, "that's very pretty." She stopped short, full of things un-