“I want you close—­closer and closer.  I want you as the best part of myself—­to make me happier first and, because happier, more useful in the world.  I want you at the helm of my life—­to steer me, Chicky.  What couldn’t we do together!  It’s selfish—? it’s one-sided, I know that.  I get everything—­you only get me.  But I’ll try and rise to the occasion.  I worship you, and no woman ever had a more devout worshipper.  I feel that your father wouldn’t be very mad with me.  But it’s for you to decide, nothing else matters either way.”

“I love to think you care for me so much,” she said.  “And I care for you, Ray, and have cared for you—­more than either of us know.  Yes, I have.  Sally Groves knew somehow.  I should like to say ‘yes’ this moment; but I can’t.  I know I shall say it presently; but I’m not going to say it till I’ve thought a great many thoughts and looked into the future and considered all this means—­for you as well as for me.  It’s life or death really, for both of us, and the more certain sure we are before, the happier we should be afterwards, I expect.”

“I’m sure enough, Estelle.  I’ve been sure enough for many a long day.  I know the very hour I began to be sure.”

“I think I am too; but I can’t say ‘yes’ and mean ‘yes’ for the present.  I’ve got to thresh out a lot of things.  I dare say they’d be absurd to you; but they’re not to me.”

“Can I help you?”

“I don’t know.  You can, I expect.  I shall come to you again to throw light on the difficult points.”

“How long are you going to take?”

“How can I tell?  But I can all the same, I’m not going to take long.”

“Say you love me—­do say that.”

“I should have told you if I didn’t.”

“That’s all right, but not so blessed as hearing you say with your own lips you do.  Say it—­say it, Chicky.  I won’t take advantage of it.  I only want to hear it.  Then I’ll leave you in peace to think your thoughts.”

“I do love you,” she said gently and steadily.  “It can be nothing smaller than that.  You are a very great part of my life—­the greatest.  I know that, because when you go away life is at evening, and when you come back again life is at morning.  Let me have a little time, Ray—­only a very little.  Then I’ll decide.”

“I hope your wisdom will let you follow your will, then, and not forbid the banns.”

“You mustn’t think it cold and horrid of me.”

“You couldn’t be cold and horrid, my sweet Estelle.  We’re neither of us capable of being cold, or horrid.  We are not babies.  I don’t blame you a bit for wanting to think about it.  I only blame myself.  If I was all I might have been, you wouldn’t want to think about it.”

This challenge shook her, but did not change her.

“Nobody’s all they might be, Ray; but many people are a great deal more than they might be.  That’s what makes you love people best, I think—­to see how brave and patient and splendid men and women can be.  Life’s so difficult even for the luckiest of us; but it isn’t the luckiest who are the pluckiest generally—­is it?  I’ve had such a lot more than my share of luck already.  So have you—­at least people think so.  But nobody knows one’s luck really except oneself.”