“You will marry me soon, dear, won't you?” he implored her. But she thought of Willy Cameron, oddly enough, even while his arms were around her; of the difference in the two men. Louis, big, crouching, suppliant and insistent; Willy Cameron, grave, reserved and steady, taking what she now knew was the blow of her engagement like a gentleman and a soldier.
They represented, although she did not know it, the two divisions of men in love, the men who offer much and give little, the others who, out of a deep humility, offer little and give everything they have.
In the end, nothing was settled. After he had gone Lily, went up to Elinor's room. She had found in Elinor lately a sort of nervous tension that puzzled her, and that tension almost snapped when Lily told her of her visit home, and of her determination to marry Louis within the next few days. Elinor had dropped her sewing and clenched her hands in her lap.
“Not soon, Lily!” she said. “Oh, not soon. Wait a little—wait two months.”
“Two months?” Lily said wonderingly. “Why two months?”
“Because, at the end of two months, nothing would make you marry him,” Elinor said, almost violently. “I have sat by and waited, because I thought you would surely see your mistake. But now—Lily, do you envy me my life?”
“No,” Lily said truthfully; “but you love him.”
Elinor sat, her eyes downcast and brooding.
“You are different,” she said finally. “You will break, where I have only bent.”
But she said no more about a delay. She had been passive too long to be able to take any strong initiative now. And all her moral and physical courage she was saving for a great emergency.