Young People's Pride by Stephen Vincent Benet

So the picture came. And other pictures like it. And since the living / that had made them was past for a little they were both fainter and in / a measure brighter with more elfin colors than even that living had been / which had made them glow at first. White memory had taken them into her / long house of silence where everything is cool with the silver of Spring / rain on leaves, she had washed from them the human pettiness, the human / separateness, the human insufficiency to express the best that must come / in any mortal relationship that lasts longer than the hour. They / were not better in memory than they had been when lived, for the best / remembrance makes only brilliant ghosts, but they were in their dim / measure nearer the soul's perfection, for the tricks of the sounding / board of the mind and the feckless instrument of the body had been put / away. "We've had infinites already -- infinites," thought Oliver, and / didn't care about the ludicrous ineptness of the words. He smiled, / turning back to the unwritten letter. If they hadn't had infinites / already -- he supposed they wouldn't want more so badly right now. He / smiled, but this time without humor. It had all seemed so easy at first.

Nancy had been in Paris at fourteen before "business reverses" of the / kind that mild, capable-looking men like Mr. Ellicott seem to attract, / as a gingerbread man draws wasps, when they are about fifty, had reduced / him to a position as chief bookkeeper and taken Nancy out of her / first year in Farmington. Oliver had spent nine months on a graduate / scholarship in Paris and Provence in 1919. Both had friends there and / argued long playful hours planning just what sort of a magnificently / cheap apartment on the _Rive Gauche_ they would have when they went / back.