Drusilla sat down. "I don't know, Marion. He is the biggest and finest man I have ever met, but—"
"But what?"
"I wanted love to come to me differently, as it has come to Jean and Derry—without any doubts. I wanted to be sure. And I am not sure. I only know that I couldn't let him go without making him happy."
"Then is it—pity?"
"No. He means more to me than that. But I gave way to an impulse—the music, and his sad eyes. And then I cried, and he came up to me—fancy a man coming up before you all like that—"
"It was quite the most dramatic moment," said the lady who wrote. "Quite unbelievable in real life. One finds those things occasionally in fiction."
"It was as if there were just two of us alone in the world," Drusilla confessed, "and I said what I did because I simply couldn't help it. And it was true at the moment; I think it is always going to be true. If I marry him I shall care a great deal. But it has not come to me just as I had—dreamed."
"Nothing is like our dreams," said Marion, and dropped her pen. "That's why I write. I can give my heroine all the bliss for which she yearns."
Drusilla stood up. "You mustn't misunderstand me, Marion. I am very happy in the thought of my good friend, of my great lover. It is only that it hasn't quite measured up to what I expected."
"Nothing measures up to what we expect."