Caroline drew Nancy into the seclusion of her bedroom and clutched her violently by the arm.
“I can’t stand the strain any longer,” she cried, “you’ve got to tell me. Are you or are you not going to marry Dick Thorndyke for his money, and is Billy Boynton putting you up to it—out of cowardice?”
“No, I’m not and he isn’t,” Nancy said. “What’s the matter with you and Billy anyway?”
“I haven’t seen him for weeks before. I just happened to be in this neighborhood to-night, and ran in here, and there he was.”
“Why don’t you take him home with you?” Nancy said.
“I don’t want him to go home with me.”
“Don’t you love him?”
“Oh, I don’t know. That isn’t the point.”
“It is the point,” Nancy said; “there isn’t any other point to the whole of existence. There’s nothing else in the world, but love, the great, big, beautiful, all-giving-up kind of love, and bearing children for the man you love; and if you don’t know that yet, Caroline, go down on your bended knees and pray to your God that He will teach it to you before it is too late.”