Not good-bye for a month or a year, but for the rest of life.

Possibly, at some distant time, they might chance to meet at the house of a mutual friend, but they would meet merely as acquaintances, never again as lovers.

Triumphing in spirit over the desire of the heart, they had taken their farewell of love--bowed to the destiny which had made of that love a forbidden thing.
But last night, even through the anguish of farewell, they had been unconsciously upheld by a feeling of exultation--that strange ecstasy of sacrifice which sometimes fires frail human beings to live up to the god that is within them.
To-day the inevitable reaction had succeeded and only the bleak, bitter facts remained.

Nan faced them squarely, though it called for all the pluck of which she was possessed.

Peter had gone, and throughout the years that stretched ahead she saw herself travelling through life step by step with Roger, living the same dull existence year in, year out, till at last, when they were both too old for anything to matter very much--too supine for romance to send the quick blood racing through their veins, too dull of sight to perceive the glamour and glory of the world--merciful death would step in and take one or other of them away.
She shivered a little with youth's instinctive dread of the time when age shall quieten the bounding pulses, slowly but surely taking the savour out of things.