“Somebody will have to look after her.”
“Dan can do that. He's changed, since she went.” Ellen glanced toward Mrs. Boyd's empty room. “You've done enough, Willy. You've seen them through, all of them. I—isn't it time you began to think about yourself?”
He was putting on his coat, and she picked a bit of thread from it, with nervous fingers.
“Where are you going to-night, Willy?”
“To the Cardews. Mr. Cardew has sent for me.”
She looked up at him.
“Willy, I want to tell you something. The Cardews won't let that marriage stand, and you know it. I think she cares for you. Don't look at me like that. I do.”
“That's because you are fond of me,” he said, smiling down at her. “I'm not the sort of man girls care about, Ellen. Let's face that. The General Manager said when he planned me, 'Here's going to be a fellow who is to have everything in the world, health, intelligence, wit and the beauty of an Adonis, but he has to lack something, so we'll make it that'.”
But Ellen, glancing up swiftly, saw that although his tone was light, there was pain in his eyes.
He reflected on Edith's decision as he walked through the park toward the Cardew house. It had not surprised him, and yet he knew it had cost her an effort. How great an effort, man-like, he would never understand, but something of what she had gone through he realized. He wondered vaguely whether, had there never been a Lily Cardew in his life, he could ever have cared for Edith. Perhaps. Not the Edith of the early days, that was certain. But this new Edith, with her gentleness and meekness, her clear, suffering eyes, her strange new humility.