"All right. Wrap up well," he said, as he left her.
Presently he was back with the old, high-backed victoria, and they started. As they went into the gray forest, it was all silvered with moonshine until it looked as lovely as a poet's mind. Jane shivered. Jerry put his arm about her, and held the robe up close to her. She settled herself against him, and at his smile, she groped for his hand.
"Jane, Jane, don't!" he whispered. "I can't stand it for you to be kind, if it's...."
"If it's what?"
"The end, Jane. I feel as if my life was all over if you go. I never knew what you meant to me until—that day. But now I know. I love you so that I want you to be happy, no matter what it does to me."
"Jerry, what is love?"
"I don't know, nobody knows. The people who feel it don't know and those who never felt it, don't know. Why, Jane?"
"Because I've always supposed it was some great surging passion that swept you out of yourself and made you a different being. I thought you'd know the minute it came—the minute it died."
He leaned toward her to look more closely into her face.
"If that's the way love is, I've never known it. But if it is something sweet and poignant that binds you to somebody, something all woven of common experiences and habits and needs; if it means something to lean on when you're in trouble and to be happy with when you're glad, why then...."