“Ah, no, Robin! I couldn’t come to you—not like that. I couldn’t take all your love—and only give you second best in return. It wouldn’t be fair.”
He laughed a little.
“I think ‘fairness’ just doesn’t come into love at all,” he said, with a great tenderness. “One just loves. And I’d be very glad to take that ‘second best’—if you’ll give it to me, Cara. Oh, my dear, if you only knew, if you only understood! A man can do so much for a woman when he loves her—he can serve her and protect her, and take all the difficult tasks away from her and leave her only the easy ones—the little, pretty, beautiful things, you know. He can stand between her and the prickles and sharp swords of life—and there are such a lot of prickles, and sometimes a terribly sharp sword.... I want to do all these things for you, Cara.”
She shook her head silently. For a moment she could not find her voice. She was too unused to tenderness—out of practice in all the sweet ways of being cared for.
“No—no, Robin,” she said at last. “I’m grateful—I shall always be grateful, and—and happier, I think, because you’ve said these things to me—because you’ve thought of me that way. But you must keep them—keep them for some nice girl who hasn’t wasted all her youth and lost her beliefs—who can give you something better than a bundle of regrets and a second-hand love. You’ll—you’ll meet her some day, Robin. And then you’ll be glad that I didn’t take you at your word.”
But Robin appeared quite unimpressed.
“No, I shan’t. I don’t want any ‘nice girl,’ thank you,” he returned, and his head went up a little. “If I can’t have you, no one else is going to take your place. But I shall never give up hope until you’ve actually married some other man. And meanwhile”—smiling a little—“I shall propose to you regularly and systematically, till you give me a different answer. I suppose”—tentatively—“you couldn’t give it to-day?”
Cara pushed him gently away from her, but she did not withdraw her hands from the strong, kind, comfortable clasp in which he held them.
“Oh, Robin, you’re ridiculous!” she said, a little break in her voice. “I’m speaking for your own good—really I am.”
“And I think I’m the best judge of that,” he answered, regarding her with a quiet humour in his eyes. “But I won’t bother you any more to-night,” he went on. “Only I shall come back.” He lifted the hands he held and kissed them—kissed them with a kind of reverence that made of the slight action an act of homage. “I shall come back,” he repeated, his eyes looking straight into hers.