"Nothing. I--I guess I'm blue," she said, in a half laugh. "Something
wonderful has happened to Zoe, and I--it's made me so happy, I'm blue.
That's it--so--happy--I'm blue."
"What is the wonderful thing?"
She told him.
It was then he caught her hands.
"Lilly, marry me! Make it possible! Don't let the years lead you into a
blind alley. You are bound inevitably to lose a child like Zoe--to life.
That's why you are so unaccountably blue, Lilly; the writing is on
the wall."
"No!" she cried, plunging past him, her hat in hand and her throat now a
cave of the winds for her unreleased sobs. "The years have brought me,
Zoe. She is my fulfillment. You can't frighten me--life cannot take her
from me. I'm not afraid--only, I can't bear anything to-night, least of
all from you--"
"Lilly, you're not--"
"Let me go! I'm all right--only tired--that's all.
Terribly--terribly--tired."
She was presently on her homeward way, walking swiftly, almost, it would
seem, a little madly, through a May evening that hung as thinly as one
thickness of a veil.
At Seventy-second Street she veered suddenly and rather unaccountably
to Riverside Drive and down into a ledge of park that dips like a
terrace to the Hudson River.
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