Questions In Paradise

"'How are you? You old love-house of always.'

'I'm the same.'

'Really the same?'

'The same as one always is. I'm yours in this town.'

'Until the plane leaves.'

'Exactly,' she said and changed her position for the better in the car. 'Look,' she said. 'We've left the shining part and it's dirty and smoky. When didn't we do that?'

'Sometimes.'

'Yes,' she said. 'Sometimes.'

Then they looked at the dirty and the smoky and her quick eyes and lovely intellengence saw everything instantly that had taken him so many years to see.

'Now it gets better,' she said. She had never told him a lie in his life and he had tried to never lie to her. But he had been quite unsuccessful.

'Do you still love me?' She asked. 'Tell me true without adornments.'

'Yes. You ought to know.'

'I know,' she said, holding him to prove it if it could prove it.

'Who is the man now?'

'Let's not talk about him. You wouldn't care for him.'

'Maybe not,' he said and held her so close that it was as though something must break if both were truly serious. It was their old game and she broke and the break was clean."

~ Ernest Heminingway, Islands In The Stream