"I am going to marry him," she said contemptuously, "and there will be five miserable people more in the world, including Chris!"
"Why should you be miserable?" he said, but his voice was not very steady, and his eyes were trying to force hers to meet them. "I'm sure Conant will not be."
"It is not his happiness or mine, that counts with you, but only Gay's," said Lossie, quietly.
He did not deny it, and a pang ran through the girl. He would never love anyone but Gay; still, did that matter? Lossie had enough love for both—through suffering she had come to know that the fulness of joy is in loving, not in being loved.
Involuntarily both had stopped, and in the wintry afternoon, with skeleton trees all about them, they were looking in each other's faces—in that moment Carlton saw his way clear, saw the road that led to Gay's happiness, if not his own—and took it.
* * * * * * *
Lossie had never looked so lovely in her life, or Carlton so manly, if frightfully pale, than when, after an hour's absence, they came in, and Gay got Lossie up into her bedroom, shut the door, and turned round to remark:
"Poor Conant!"
That she did not say "Poor Carlton!" was part of the tragedy of the whole thing—for him.
"Oh, Gay," cried Lossie, "I didn't ask him this time"—she blushed warmly—"but I've been doing pretty much the same thing in a different way."