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."

"It's the things that are going to happen will make our good luck," he
said. "You'll find men are seldom satisfied with the past, whatever
women may be. God knows I'm not."

"You were always one of my two heroes when I was a child; and father was
the other. He is still my hero--and so are you, Ray."

"A pretty poor hero. I wouldn't pretend that to my dog. I on