Part 3 — I

"IRENE, I've got a present for you," said Lewis.

"What is it?"

"I am going to give you my freedom. I am leaving the Franco-African. Are you surprised, like everyone else? It is quite impossible to do two things well at the same time, and I have decided to love you to perfection. That will take up all my time."

"It's a dangerous outlook for me," replied Irene. "Imagine my anxiety."

"Since you are my wife ..."

"Considering the length of the journey, you are hurrying too much at the start. You must be wary."

"No. For once in your life you have found a Frenchman who is not prudent and acts without thinking of to-morrow, and you give him no encouragement. Don't think too much of me for it; it is no sacrifice for me. We live in an age when things leave us long before we leave them. I know quite well when I shall tire of happiness, but I never know when happiness will be tired of me: it took me by surprise; so I cling to it. I can easily live without doing anything; I was brought up in England. Why is it that French people always think that when a statesman is no longer in office, when an author's books no longer appear in the shop windows, or a business man neglects his office, he is going to die? Besides, it isn't as if I were going to retire into the desert. On the contrary, you know that I am at last emerging from my solitude."

"Which is preparation for boredom."

"No, for bliss. In spite of appearances, I was a lonely man, that is to say a caveman, supremely selfish, hunting for his daily food, just enough for himself. I regret it now. I've written a very tactful letter to my Board of Directors, and I've got a year's holiday. As to the Company, I just asked them to let me retire into your arms. Besides, what am I leaving?"

"Don't break with anything, Lewis, believe me. Life is better without shocks. You will soon regret your work and even your friends."

"I have passed the age for having friends. By now they have all met the woman they were meant to meet. You know what women think of friendship between men: it puts them in the shade. As for work ... I have never worked. Modern business isn't work, it's plunder. I was going headlong into old age with that over-agitation and lack of activity which are typical of the present day. So far from being diminished, my resources have increased since I've had you. I am learning to become human. My first need is to adore you."

"Mine is to yield to you," answered Irene, "even though you are listless and frivolous ... but I don't regret my foolishness any more. I need you now that I have cut adrift from everything. You are my nearest relation."

From the moment Irene agreed to marry a foreigner and to leave Trieste, she also broke the bonds that tied her to her bank, her business life being only an extension of her family life; without one the other became impossible. There is no place for dreams in the counting-house homes of Greek bankers. The unexpressed devotion, the professional admiration, and the fraternal attachment which her two Apostolatos cousins had for her behind the granite walls of the Trieste mansion, in a strange atmosphere of strong room and harem, rendered precarious any form of compromise, at which, besides, she knew that she herself would never have been able to stop. Having built up her life on a basis of freedom, she considered that she had a right (without realizing how impatient she was to do so) to renounce it again.

There they both were, blissful, useless, a prey to a public happiness, depending on one another as much as offer and acceptance do. They remained suspended by a single thread above the pit dug by themselves, and they rejoiced in their danger.

What was to be done now with their victory? Save when they dressed (and in the peculiar vagrancy of dreams) they never knew a moment's solitude. There was nothing unexpected or thrilling between them, nor any room for jealousy. They belonged to each other in the most difficult of all lighting: that of happiness.

As though that were not enough they chose to leave the West and to go to Greece.