The blight that cankers and kills is on you and on me for the rest of our lives!" So far I had forced myself to listen to him.

At those last words the picture of the future that he was placing before me became too hideous to be endured.

I refused to hear more.
"You are talking horribly," I said.

"At your age and at mine, have we done with love and done with hope?
It is blasphemy to Love and Hope to say it!" "Wait till you have read the Trial," he answered.

"You mean to read it, I suppose ?" "Every word of it! With a motive, Eustace, which you have yet to know." "No motive of yours, Valeria, no love and hope of yours, can alter the inexorable facts.