"How can I tell? But I can all the same, I'm not going to take long."
"Say you love me—do say that."
"I should have told you if I didn't."
"That's all right, but not so blessed as hearing you say with your own lips you do. Say it—say it, Chicky. I won't take advantage of it. I only want to hear it. Then I'll leave you in peace to think your thoughts."
"I do love you," she said gently and steadily. "It can be nothing smaller than that. You are a very great part of my life—the greatest. I know that, because when you go away life is at evening, and when you come back again life is at morning. Let me have a little time, Ray—only a very little. Then I'll decide."
"I hope your wisdom will let you follow your will, then, and not forbid the banns."
"You mustn't think it cold and horrid of me."
"You couldn't be cold and horrid, my sweet Estelle. We're neither of us capable of being cold, or horrid. We are not babies. I don't blame you a bit for wanting to think about it. I only blame myself. If I was all I might have been, you wouldn't want to think about it."
This challenge shook her, but did not change her.
"Nobody's all they might be, Ray; but many people are a great deal more than they might be. That's what makes you love people best, I think—to see how brave and patient and splendid men and women can be. Life's so difficult even for the luckiest of us; but it isn't the luckiest who are the pluckiest generally—is it? I've had such a lot more than my share of luck already. So have you—at least people think so. But nobody knows one's luck really except oneself."