“Well,” he observed, still smiling. “I don’t know what this is all about, but here I am. I am going to listen because you ask me to, but nothing you may say will make the slightest difference between you and me. I tell you that in the beginning.”
“Oh, yes, it will! It must.”
“But it won’t. When you told me you loved me—”
“But I didn’t! I didn’t!”
“Yes, you did. At any rate, you couldn’t say you didn’t love me and that amounted to the same thing.... Oh, my dear, what is the use of pretending? You know we love each other. Nothing else matters but that.”
“Yes, something else does matter. It must matter. Oh, Bob, please be reasonable and help me, instead of making it harder. Even if I do care—even if we both care—”
“And we do ... now, don’t we?”
“Oh, please! Don’t you see? There is so much to be thought of. I have been thinking every minute since—since you went away. Bob, haven’t you thought at all?”
He shook his head. “I have been thinking of just one thing,” he declared. “The essential thing. That is enough for me.”
“It isn’t enough. It can’t be. How can we be so selfish? When I think of Uncle Foster and of your grandfather and what this would mean to them, and to me, if they knew it—”