“I know what you mean.  Like Jinx, there.  I’m sorry!  I didn’t mean that.  But you must not talk about marrying me unless you mean it.  You see, I happen to care.”

“Willy!”

“It won’t hurt you to know, although I hadn’t meant to tell you.  And of course, you know, I am not asking you to marry me.  Only I’d like you to feel that you can count on me, always.  The one person a woman can count on is the man who loves her.”

And after a little silence: 

“You see, I know you are not in love with me.  I cared from the beginning, but I always knew that.”

“I wish I did.”  She was rather close to tears.  She had not felt at all like that with Pink.  But, although she knew he was suffering, his quietness deceived her.  She had the theory of youth about love, that it was a violent thing, tempestuous and passionate.  She thought that love demanded, not knowing that love gives first, and then asks.  She could not know how he felt about his love for her, that it lay in a sort of cathedral shrine in his heart.  There were holy days when saints left their niches and were shown in city streets, but until that holy day came they remained in the church.

“You will remember that, won’t you?”

“I’ll remember, Willy.”

“I won’t be a nuisance, you know.  I’ve never had any hope, so I won’t make you unhappy.  And don’t be unhappy about me, Lily.  I would rather love you, even knowing I can’t have you, than be loved by anybody else.”

Perhaps, had he shown more hurt, he would have made it seem more real to her.  But he was frightfully anxious not to cause her pain.

“I’m really very happy, loving you,” he added, and smiled down at her reassuringly.  But he had for all that a wild primitive impulse which almost overcame him for a moment, to pick her up in his arms and carry her out the door and away with him.  Somewhere, anywhere.  Away from that grim old house, and that despotic little man, to liberty and happiness and—­William Wallace Cameron.

Ellen came in, divided between uneasiness and delight, and inquired painstakingly about his mother, and his uncle in California, and the Presbyterian minister.  But she was uncomfortable and uneasy and refused to sit down, and Willy watched her furtively slipping out again with a slight frown.  It was not right, somehow, this dividing of the world into classes, those who served and those who were served.  But he had an idea that it was those below who made the distinction, nowadays.  It was the masses who insisted on isolating the classes.  They made kings, perhaps that they might some day reach up and pull them off their thrones.  At the top of the stairs Ellen found Mademoiselle, who fixed her with cold eyes.

“What were you doing down there,” she demanded.

“Miss Lily sent for me, to see that young man I told you about.”

“How dare you go down?  And into the library?”