"Aunt Caro, I'm not ill," the words came in tumbling haste, "there's nothing bodily the matter with me--I'm only dreadfully unhappy. I know Mr. Craven is back--he came to me in the studio this afternoon. He asked me to marry him," the troubled voice sank to a whisper, "and I--I don't know what to do."
"My dear." The tenderness of Miss Craven's tone sent a strangling wave of emotion into Gillian's throat. "Aunt Caro, did you know? Do you wish it too?" she murmured wistfully.
Unwilling to admit a previous knowledge which would be difficult to explain, Miss Craven temporised. "I very greatly hoped for it," she said guardedly; "you and Barry are all I have to care for, and you are both so--alone. I know you think of a very different life, I know you have dreams of making a career for yourself. But a career is not all that a woman wants in her life; it can perhaps mean independence and fame, it can also mean great loneliness and the loss of the full and perfect happiness that should be every woman's. You mustn't judge all cases by me. I have been happy in my own way but I want a greater, richer happiness for you, dear. I want for you the best that the world can give, and that best I believe to be the shelter and the safety of a man's love."
The brown head dropped on her knee. "You are thinking of me--I am thinking of him," came a stifled whisper.
Miss Craven stroked the soft hair tenderly. "Then why not give him what he asks, my dear," she said gently. "He has known sorrow and suffering. If through you, he can forget the past in a new happiness, will you not grant it him? Oh, Gillian, I have so hoped that you might care for each other; that, together, you might make the Towers the perfect home it should be, a home of mutual trust and love. You and Barry and, please God, after you--your children." She choked with unexpected emotion and brushed the mist from her eyes impatiently.
And at her knee Gillian knelt motionless, her lip held fast between her teeth to stop the bitter cry that nearly escaped her, her heart almost bursting. The picture Miss Craven's words called up was an ideal of happiness that might have been. The suffering that reality promised seemed more than she could contemplate. What happiness could come from such a travesty? The strange yearnings she had experienced seemed suddenly crystallised into form, and the knowledge was a greater pain than she had known. What she would have gone down to the gates of death to give him he did not require--the unutterable joy that Miss Craven suggested would never be hers. She searched for words, for an explanation of her silence that must seem strange to the elder woman. Miss Craven obviously knew nothing of the unusual conditions attached to his proposal, her words proved it, and Gillian could not tell her. She could not betray his confidence even if she had so wished. If she could but speak frankly and show all her difficulty to the friend who had never yet failed in love and sympathy----She sought refuge in prevarication. "How can I marry him?" she cried miserably. "You don't know anything about me. I'm not a fit person to be his wife--my antecedents----"