"When you said just now that you didn't like what I did just then, do
you mean you didn't like me to do it? Or that you don't care for that
sort of thing? Of course I know," he added hastily, "you're not that
kind of girl. I--"
He turned and looked at her.
"You know I'm still in love with you, don't you, Elizabeth?"
She returned his gaze frankly.
"I don't see how you can be when you know what you do know."
"I know how you feel now. But I know that people don't go on loving
hopelessly all their lives. You're young. You've got"--he figured
quickly--"you've got about fifty-odd years to live yet, and some of
these days you'll be--not forgetting," he changed, when he saw her quick
movement. "I know you'll not forget him. But remembering and loving are
different."
"I wonder," she said, her eyes on the moon, and full of young tragedy.
"If they are, if one can remember without loving, then couldn't one love
without remembering?"
He stared at her.
"You're too deep for me sometimes," he said. "I'm not subtle, Elizabeth.
I daresay I'm stupid in lots of things. But I'm not stupid about this.
I'm not trying to get a promise, you know. I only want you to know how
things are. I don't want to know why he went away, or why he doesn't
come back. I only want you to face the facts. I'd be good to you," he
finished, in a low tone. "I'd spend my life thinking of ways to make you
happy."
She was touched. She reached down and put her hand on his shoulder.
"You deserve the best, Wallie. And you're asking for a second best. Even
that--I'm just not made that way, I suppose. Fifty years or a hundred,
it would be all the same."
"You'd always care for him, you mean?"
"Yes. I'm afraid so."
When he looked at her her eyes had again that faraway and yet flaming
look which he had come to associate with her thoughts of Dick. She
seemed infinitely removed from him, traveling her lonely road past
loving outstretched hands and facing ahead toward--well, toward fifty
years of spinsterhood. The sheer waste of it made him shudder.
"You're cold, too, Wallie," she said gently. "You'd better go home."
He was about to repudiate the idea scornfully, when he sneezed! She got
up at once and held out her hand.