Wherever you are sent I will try to come. _Wherever_--do you
hear? Do you think that that 'other' life is a dragon to eat me up? That
it will be such bliss to me that I shall forget you completely? It isn't
to be bliss, but work, hard work, and competition. It is the work that
will keep me to Paris, not my happiness, my gaiety, my content with
other faces. That would comfort me if I were listener, and you the
speaker. But, Fanny, Fanny, I never met any one with such joy as you--it
is you who change the forest and the inns we meet in, make the journeys
a miracle. Don't show me another face. We have been in love without a
cloud, without scenes, without tears. You have laughed at everything.
Don't change, don't show me someone whom I don't know; _not that
sad face_!"
"This then!" She held up a face in whose eyes and smile was the hasty
radiance his fervour had brought her--and at sight of it the words broke
from him--"Are you happy so quickly?"
"Yes, yes, already happy."
"Because I speak aloud of what I feel? What a doubting heart you have
within you! And I believe you only pretend to distress yourself, that
you may test whether I am sensitive enough to show the reflection of it.
Come! Well--am I right?"
"Partly. But I need not think. Oh, I am glad your feeling is so like
mine, and mine like yours! I will let the parting take care of itself
--yet there is one thing about which I cannot tell.
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