At any rate, he felt that he must speak, leaving luck or ill luck to the future.
And so he said:
“Why couldn’t you run away with me now, Sondra, darling?
It’s so long until fall and I want you so much.
Why couldn’t we?
Your mother’s not likely to want to let you marry me then, anyhow.
But if we went away now, she couldn’t help herself, could she?
And afterwards, in a few months or so, you could write her and then she wouldn’t mind.
Why couldn’t we, Sondra?”
His voice was very pleading, his eyes full of a sad dread of refusal — and of the future that lay unprotected behind that.
And by now so caught was she by the tremor with which his mood invested him, that she paused — not really shocked by the suggestion at all — but decidedly moved, as well as flattered by the thought that she was able to evoke in Clyde so eager and headlong a passion.
He was so impetuous — so blazing now with a flame of her own creating, as she felt, yet which she was incapable of feeling as much as he, as she knew — such a flame as she had never seen in him or any one else before.
And would it not be wonderful if she could run away with him now — secretly — to Canada or New York or Boston, or anywhere?
The excitement her elopement would create here and elsewhere — in Lycurgus, Albany, Utica!
The talk and feeling in her own family as well as elsewhere!
And Gilbert would be related to her in spite of him — and the Griffiths, too, whom her mother and father so much admired.
For a moment there was written in her eyes the desire and the determination almost, to do as he suggested — run away — make a great lark of this, her intense and true love.
For, once married, what could her parents do?
And was not Clyde worthy of her and them, too?
Of course — even though nearly all in her set fancied that he was not quite all he should be, just because he didn’t have as much money as they had.
But he would have — would he not — after he was married to her — and get as good a place in her father’s business as Gil Griffiths had in his father’s?
Yet a moment later, thinking of her life here and what her going off in such a way would mean to her father and mother just then — in the very beginning of the summer season — as well as how it would disrupt her own plans and cause her mother to feel especially angry, and perhaps even to bring about the dissolution of the marriage on the ground that she was not of age, she paused — that gay light of adventure replaced by a marked trace of the practical and the material that so persistently characterized her.
What difference would a few months make, anyhow?
It might, and no doubt would, save Clyde from being separated from her forever, whereas their present course might insure their separation.
Accordingly she now shook her head in a certain, positive and yet affectionate way, which by now Clyde had come to know spelled defeat — the most painful and irremediable defeat that had yet come to him in connection with all this.
She would not go!
Then he was lost — lost — and she to him forever maybe.
Oh, God!
For while her face softened with a tenderness which was not usually there — even when she was most moved emotionally — she said:
“I would, honey, if I did not think it best not to, now.
It’s too soon.
Mamma isn’t going to do anything right now. I know she isn’t.
Besides she has made all her plans to do a lot of entertaining here this summer, and for my particular benefit.
She wants me to be nice to — well, you know who I mean.
And I can be, without doing anything to interfere with us in any way, I’m sure — so long as I don’t do anything to really frighten her.”
She paused to smile a reassuring smile.
“But you can come up here as often as you choose, don’t you see, and she and these others won’t think anything of it, because you won’t be our guest, don’t you see?
I’ve fixed all that with Bertine.
And that means that we can see each other all summer long up here, just about as much as we want to, don’t you see?
Then in the fall, when I come back, and if I find that I can’t make her be nice to you at all, or consider our being engaged, why, I will run away with you.
Yes, I will, darling — really and truly.”
Darling!
The fall!
She stopped, her eyes showing a very shrewd conception of all the practical difficulties before them, while she took both of his hands in hers and looked up into his face.
Then, impulsively and conclusively, she threw both arms about his neck and, pulling his head down, kissed him.
“Can’t you see, dearie?
Please don’t look so sad, darling.
Sondra loves her Clyde so much.
And she’ll do anything and everything to make things come out right.
Yes, she will.