Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/86

 "How silly I am," she sobbed against my shoulder. "I—I don't know anything about him, do I, Elizabeth? But it would be wonderful to be loved—like that."

All through the night she slept on my arm, with her hand curled in the hollow of my neck as she had slept as a child. But I did not sleep. My mind leaped forward into the future, and I saw my world without her.

Nancy stayed with me through September. Anthony's holiday was up the day after the garden party, and he went back to Boston, keeping touch with Nancy in the modern way by wire, special delivery, and long-distance telephone.

It was on a stormy night with wind and beating rain that Nancy told me Anthony was insisting that she marry him in December.

"But I can't, Elizabeth. I am going to write to him to-night."

"When will it be?"

"Who knows? I—I'm not ready. If he can't wait—he can let me go."

She did not stay to listen to my comment on her mutiny—she swept out of the library and sat down at the piano in the other room, making a picture of herself between the tall white candles which 80