“It doesn’t seem fair, Robin,” she faltered. “I’m older than you are, for one thing.”
“One year—or two, is it?” he mocked joyfully.
“Half a century, I think!”—with a quick sigh.
“You’ll grow younger,” he suggested optimistically. “And anyway, can you bear to think of me living all alone at the Cottage after Ann is married? I should probably commit suicide.”
Cara stood twisting a spray of maidenhair fern round and round her fingers till the tiny pale green leaves shrivelled up and dropped off and only the wiry stem remained.
“When is—Ann going to be married?” she asked slowly, at last.
“In April. It’s all fixed. But the thing that matters is when are we going to be married?”
April! Eliot was to be married in April! Cara was conscious of a muffled stab of pain. But she felt no active rebellion. With a wistful sense of resignation she recognised that his life and hers were separate and apart. She herself had sundered them more than ten years ago. But now, at last, Eliot had won through to happiness! She thanked God for that. And there was still something she could give Robin in return for his eager worship—good comradeship, and that second love which, though it bears but a faint semblance to the rushing ecstasy of young, passionate, first love, yet holds, perhaps, a deeper, more selfless tenderness and understanding.
She turned to the man waiting so eagerly for her answer.
“Are you quite sure you want me, Robin?” she asked.