“Brace, now I am speaking the woman’s language, perhaps you may not be able to understand me, but I know Con is not offering me dregs—I do not think he has any dregs in his nature; he is offering me the best, the truest love of his life. I know it! I know it! The love that would bring my greatest joy and his best good and—yet I am afraid!”
Kendall went over and stood close beside his sister again.
“You know that?” he asked, “and still are afraid? Why?”
The clear eyes looked up pathetically. “Because Con may not know, and I may not be able to make him know—make him—forget!”
There was a moment’s silence. Kendall was never to forget the magnolia tree in its gorgeous, pink bloom; the droop of his strong, fine sister! Sharply he recalled the night long ago when Truedale groaned and threw his letters on the fire.
“Lyn, I hardly dare ask this, knowing you as I do—you are not the sort to compromise with honour selfishly or idiotically—but, Lyn, the—the other love, it was not—an evil thing?”
The tears sprang to Lynda’s eyes and she flung her arms around her brother’s neck and holding him so whispered:
“No! no! At least I can understand that. It was the—the most beautiful and tender tragedy. That is the trouble. It was so—wonderful, that I fear no man can ever quite forget and take the new love without a backward look. And oh! Brace, I must have—my own! Men cannot always understand women when they say this. They think, when we say we want our own lives, that it means lives running counter to theirs. This is not so. We want, we must choose—but the best of us want the common life that draws close to the heart of things; we want to go with our men and along their way. Our way and theirs are the same way, when love is big enough.”
“Lyn—there isn’t a man on God’s earth worthy of—you!”
“Brace, look at me—answer true. Am I such that a man could really want me?”