"Oh, that? Oh!" said Charles, carefully fitting on his hat, and then removing it again. "I remember now--it's nothing. Got a tumble this afternoon, that's all. Stupid thing." "You must let me get some hot water down the hall. I'm afraid it's--" But he indicated, quite brusquely, that his eye was all right, just the way he liked it, that having water put on it was, in particular, the last thing he would ever dream of. She said behind him, slowly, after a pause: "If you won't, you won't, of course.... But it's so exactly like you--" "Ready?" said Charles. But when he turned he found that Mary had turned, too, after him--stood facing him anew. And this time the confrontation was too near, too immediate, to be further avoided. He now discovered that the thin veil had not withdrawn his friend very far. Looking at her for the first time since her cataclysm, he saw that her delicate face wore that look described as "rain-washed," which commonly means peace, but peace at a price. The redness of her eyelids was quite perceptible. What struck the young man particularly, however, was the look of the blue eyes themselves. More or less irrelevant eyes he had always thought them, for all the heavy arched brows which so emphasized their faculty for steady, sometimes disconcerting, interrogation. That characteristic grave intentness was in Mary's gaze now: but it was not this that gave her look its power to hold Charles Garrott in his tracks. The peculiar commotion within him gave forth in a short laugh, testy and embarrassed: "Honestly, if you say the word 'eye' to me again--" "I wasn't going to speak of your eye," said Mary Wing, with quite remarkable meekness.... "I was thinking of that remark you made--about being a fair-weather friend." And then she went on hurriedly, with a rare, impulsiveness: "I've just been thinking--I don't suppose since the world began there was ever such another rainy-day friend as you. It's got so now that I never get into trouble without thinking right away--as I was thinking this afternoon when I left the Flowers'--that you'll be right there to help me with it. Yes, I was. And it's so--perfect. Nothing to spoil it ever--not one thing for you to gain--all just your rather extravagant idea of what being a friend means. You don't know--how much it means...." The strange speech--strange blossom of her disruptive emotion--ended a little short; but that it ended was the principal thing. Doubtless there had been a time when words such as these from Mary Wing, this fine frank expression of abiding friendship, would have been sweet and acceptable to Charles Garrott, crowning him with a full reward. But it seemed that that time must have passed, somewhat abruptly.... The two moderns stood, gazing full at each other. And now, in the same moment, a little color tinged the girl's cheek, beneath her veil, and the young man turned rather pale.