"Why not," said he, "ask me to ride with you?"
"Oh, I know you'd do it," she said. "You're a hero, but I'm not quite such a brute."
I wish I could have gone to California.
I rode with Lucy the next afternoon, for the last time as we both thought. As we came home through Lover's Lane, the ponies walking very slowly, she leaned toward me a little, turned the great praying eyes upon me, and said, her mouth smiling falteringly:
"Please don't go away. I hate it. Everything's gone all wrong with the world. And if you're not my friend that I can talk to and tell things to, I haven't one."
"Are you serious, Lucy?"
"Oh, it's no matter!" she said lightly, and began to gather her reins, preparatory to a gallop.
"It's only that it didn't seem possible that you could need one particular friend out of so many. Of course, I stay. Will you tell me now what it is that's gone all wrong?"
"Yes," she said with a quickly drawn breath. "I've had to tell John that I don't love him any more, and don't want to be his wife."
If one of those still and stately pines which lend Lover's Lane the appearance of a cathedral aisle had fallen across my shoulders, I could hardly have been more suddenly stunned.