"It won't be that. I'm crazy about you, Hildred, more than any fellow ever was before."
"And that's the way I feel about you, Tom. I don't care a bit about the things dad and mother think so important. You're you; you're not your father or your mother, whoever they may have been. I shouldn't love you any the better if you became the son of Mr. and Mrs. Whitelaw. It would only make it easier."
It was a windy afternoon in April, with the trees in new leaf. All along the Fenway the bridal-veil made cascades of whiteness whiter than the hawthorns. Pansies, tulips, and forget-me-nots brightened all the foot-paths. The two tall, supple figures bent and laughed in the teeth of the lusty wind.
Rather it was she who laughed, since she had the confidence in life, while he knew only life's problems. He had always known life's problems, and though there had never been a time when he was free from them, he never had had one to solve so difficult as this.
"But that's where the shoe pinches," he declared, "that I'm myself, so much more myself than many fellows are; and yet, unless I turn into some one else, I shall lose you."
She threw back her answer with a kind of radiant honesty. "You couldn't lose me, Tom. I couldn't lose you. We've grown together. Nothing can cut us asunder. One can't win out against two people who're as willing to wait as we are."
He was not comforted. "Oh, wait! I don't want to wait."
"Neither do I; but we'd both rather wait than give each other up."
"Wait—for how long?"
"How can I tell how long? As long as we have to."