"Felicia, forgive me! I didn't mean to hurt you."
"You didn't. It just came back to me for a moment how fearfully young and happy and ignorant I was in those days. But with all the wisdom I've garnered since, if I had it to do over again, I suppose I should travel precisely the same road. Isn't it queer, Stephen? Don't you feel that way about the past, too?"
"No, my road was too devilish rough. I'd like it different."
Felicia looked up, surprised both at his words and the unusual passion in his voice.
"Do you suppose I have ever forgotten I didn't get what I wanted? Felicia, I loved you before Syd ever saw you."
"I know. I'm sorry. I was always sorry. You know that, Stephen."
"You needn't be. Loving you made a man of me, though it did make the road rough. Things had come my way rather too easily up to that time. Syd was the better man. I always owned that."
"You were fine, Stephen. I've never forgotten how fine. And Sydney cared more for you than for any one else in the world--barring us." She smiled a little and her eyes strayed out to the magnolia tree beneath whose generous shade Marianna and Donald were laboriously engaged in the construction of a kite with much chatter and argument.
"Are you so afraid of change you wouldn't risk beginning over again--with me?"
Felicia's sewing dropped in her lap and her blue eyes opened wide with surprise and consternation as she looked up to meet his dark, eager eyes.
"Well? Is it so impossible to conceive? Haven't you guessed I was going to ask it sooner or later?"
"Why? I don't expect the same kind of love you gave Syd. You couldn't give it, of course. That is past. But you are too young to have life stop altogether for you--too young and too lovely. Other men will ask it if I don't, and I--well, I want to get in ahead." He laughed boyishly, but his eyes, which were grave enough, never left her face. "Is there any reason you couldn't say yes?" he asked.
"I am afraid there are many. One of them--rather two of them--are out under the tree at present."
"Are they really a reason? I love the kiddies and they like me. Surely it would be no injustice nor detriment to them. Why should it?"
"Not to them--rather to you--to any man I married. They are a very piece of me. They are me. If there ever came to be a decision between them and--well, call the man you--I should decide for them. Is that fair to you? Would you risk it?"