“Quite sure,” he answered gravely.
“Then, if you’re really sure, I’ll marry you whenever you like—after Ann is married.”
He kissed her with a deep, grave passion, holding her closely in his arms.
“You shall forget the past, dearest—I promise you, you shall forget all the things that hurt you,” he said with tender reassurance. Presently, when the first few minutes were passed, he smiled down at her, a gleam of mirth in his eyes.
“I shall see to it that Ann and Eliot don’t postpone their wedding—if it means postponing ours! You said ‘after,’ you know.”
She nodded.
“Yes. I can’t possibly commandeer Ann’s natural protector”—smiling—“until she’s safely bestowed in some one else’s care.”
But though she jested about the stipulation she had made, it was the outcome of a curiously definite idea. Since it was through her that Eliot’s happiness had once been wrecked, she felt as though, until this new-found happiness which had come to him were assured—secure beyond any shadow of doubt—she was not free to take her own. It was in a sense an expiation, a pathetic little human effort to propitiate fate and turn aside any blow; aimed at Eliot’s happiness by those jealous gods who exact payment to the very last farthing.
Ann was overjoyed when she heard of Robin’s engagement. To know that her adored brother would not be left lonely by her marriage, and to see Cara, whose former experience of matrimony had proved such a ghastly failure, with a new, brooding gladness in her eyes, added the last drop to her cup of happiness.