“I love you so,” he stammered. “I'm sorry. I'll not do it again.”
She was startled, but not angry.
“I don't like it,” was all she said. And because she did not want him to think she was angry, she sat down again. But the boy was shaken. He got out a cigarette and lighted it, his hands trembling. He could not think of anything to say. It was as though by that one act he had cut a bridge behind him and on the other side lay all the platitudes, the small give and take of their hours together. What to her was a regrettable incident was to him a great dramatic climax. Boylike, he refused to recognize its unimportance to her. He wanted to talk about it.
“When you said just now that you didn't like what I did just then, do you mean you didn't like me to do it? Or that you don't care for that sort of thing? Of course I know,” he added hastily, “you're not that kind of girl. I—”
He turned and looked at her.
“You know I'm still in love with you, don't you, Elizabeth?”
She returned his gaze frankly.
“I don't see how you can be when you know what you do know.”
“I know how you feel now. But I know that people don't go on loving hopelessly all their lives. You're young. You've got”—he figured quickly—“you've got about fifty-odd years to live yet, and some of these days you'll be—not forgetting,” he changed, when he saw her quick movement. “I know you'll not forget him. But remembering and loving are different.”
“I wonder,” she said, her eyes on the moon, and full of young tragedy. “If they are, if one can remember without loving, then couldn't one love without remembering?”