"Nothing will, Lily…. I must go now."
"Don't you believe I love you?"
He drew a deep, unconscious breath.
"I suppose so. Different people express love differently. There's no use in asking you to be different—"
She said, piteously: "I'm trying. Don't you see I'm trying? Give me time, Louis! Make allowances. You can't utterly change people in a few hours."
He gazed at her intently for a moment.
"You mean that you are trying to be fair to—her?"
"I—if you call it that;—yes! But a family can not adapt itself, instantaneously, to such a cataclysm as threatens—I mean—I mean—oh, Louis! Try to understand us and sympathise a little with us!"
His arms closed around her shoulders:
"Little sister, we both have the family temper—and beneath it, the family instinct for cohesion. If we are also selfish it is not individual but family selfishness. It is the family which has always said to the world, 'Noli me tangere!' while we, individually, are really inclined to be kinder, more sympathetic, more curious about the neighbours outside our gate. Let it be so now. Once inside the family, what can harm Valerie?"