Why won't you marry him, Sara ?" The question flashed out suddenly.
"Because--why--oh, because I'm not in love with him." A gleam of rather sardonic mirth showed in Elisabeth's face.
"I wish," she observed, "that we lived in the good old days when you could have been carried off by sheer force and _compelled_ to marry him." Sara laughed outright.
"I really believe you mean it!" she said with some amusement.
Elisabeth nodded.
"I do.

I shouldn't have hesitated." "And what about me?
You wouldn't have considered my feelings at all in the matter, I suppose ?" Sara was still smiling, yet she had a dim consciousness that, preposterous as it sounded, Elisabeth would have had no scruples whatever about putting such a plan into effect had it been in any way feasible.
"No." Elisabeth replied with the utmost composure.

"Tim comes first.
But"-- and suddenly her voice melted to an indescribable sweetness--"You would be almost one with him in my heart, because you had brought him happiness." She paused, then launched her question with a delicate hesitancy that skillfully concealed all semblance of the probe.

"Tell me--is there any one else who has asked of you what Tim asks?
Perhaps I have come too late with my plea ?" Sara shook her head.
"No," she said flatly, "there is no one else." With a sudden bitter self-mockery she added: "Tim's is the only proposal of marriage I have to my credit." The repressed anxiety with which Elisabeth had been regarding her relaxed, and a curious look of content took birth in the hyacinth eyes.
It was as though the bitterness of Sara's answer in some way reassured her, serving her purpose.
"Then can't you give Tim what he wants?
You will be robbing no one.
Sara"-- her low voice vibrated with the urgency of her desire--"promise me at least that you will think it over--that you will not dismiss the idea as though it were impossible ?" Sara half rose; her eyes, wide and questioning, were fixed upon Elisabeth's.
"But why--why do you ask me this ?" she faltered.
"Because I think"-- very softly--"that Tim himself will ask you the same thing before very long.

And I can't face what it will mean to him if you send him away.