He stared at her.
“You're too deep for me sometimes,” he said. “I'm not subtle, Elizabeth. I daresay I'm stupid in lots of things. But I'm not stupid about this. I'm not trying to get a promise, you know. I only want you to know how things are. I don't want to know why he went away, or why he doesn't come back. I only want you to face the facts. I'd be good to you,” he finished, in a low tone. “I'd spend my life thinking of ways to make you happy.”
She was touched. She reached down and put her hand on his shoulder.
“You deserve the best, Wallie. And you're asking for a second best. Even that—I'm just not made that way, I suppose. Fifty years or a hundred, it would be all the same.”
“You'd always care for him, you mean?”
“Yes. I'm afraid so.”
When he looked at her her eyes had again that faraway and yet flaming look which he had come to associate with her thoughts of Dick. She seemed infinitely removed from him, traveling her lonely road past loving outstretched hands and facing ahead toward—well, toward fifty years of spinsterhood. The sheer waste of it made him shudder.
“You're cold, too, Wallie,” she said gently. “You'd better go home.”
He was about to repudiate the idea scornfully, when he sneezed! She got up at once and held out her hand.
“You are very dear to feel about me the way you do” she said, rather rapidly. “I appreciate your telling me. And if you're chilly when you get home, you'd better take some camphor.”