"I shall make her eat her words."
Winifred shook her head. "Don't be hard on her, Pip. We women are so helpless in our loves. Richard might make her happy if he cared enough, but he doesn't. Perhaps Eve will be broadened and deepened by it all. I don't know. No one knows."
"I know this. That you and Tony seem to get a lot out of things, Win."
"Of marriage? We do. Yet we've had all of the little antagonisms and differences. But underneath it we know—that we're made for each other. And that helps. It has helped us to push the wrong things out of our lives and to hold on to the right ones."
Philip's young face was set. "I wanted to have my chance with Eve. We are young and pretty light-weight on the surface, but life together might make us a bit more like you and Tony. And now Richard is spoiling things."
Back at Crossroads, Nancy was trying to convince her son that he was not spoiling things for her. "I have always been such a dreamer, dear boy. It was silly for me to think that I could stand between you and your big future. I have written to Sulie Tyson, and she'll stay with me, and you can run down for week-ends—and I'll always have David."
"Mother, let me go to Eve and tell her——"
"Tell her what?"
"That I shall stay—with you."
She was white with the whiteness which had never left her since he had told her that he was going to marry Eve.