"Rita!"
"Yes."
"There is no use telling me all this. I know it. He knows I know it. I am not going to marry him."
After a silence Rita said, slowly: "Did he ask you to?"
Valerie looked down, passed her needle through the hem once, twice.
"Yes," she said, softly, "he asked me."
"And—you refused?"
"Yes."
Rita said: "I like Kelly Neville … and I love you better, dear. But it's not best for you to marry him…. Life isn't a very sentimental affair—not nearly as silly a matter as poets and painters and dramas and novels pretend it is. Love really plays a very minor part in life, Don't you know it?"
"Yes. I lived twenty years without it," said Valerie, demurely, yet in her smile Rita divined the hidden tragedy. And she leaned forward and kissed her impulsively.