Ariel shut the door and returned to her final night duties. “It’s something for me. Very important,” she told Grandam. “But I can’t tell you. You don’t mind?” Grandam let her finish and go off to her own room without a single question, or even any show of surprise; she was a person wise in her incuriosities. Going, Ariel shut all the doors between herself and Grandam. The electric bell in the side of Grandam’s bed made that reasonably safe, and in any case it was always done. Anne was lying across Ariel’s bed, still in her coat though her hat had been thrown on the floor, sobbing. Ariel sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to get her attention, but the wild sobbing only increased. She knew nothing farther to do but to lie down beside her, throw an arm tight around her, bulky fur coat and all, and press her cheek to the burning, drenched one. She had never heard any one cry like this or felt such convulsions of sobbing through a body. But her pity was more potent than her surprise and shyness, and she pressed closer and closer, holding Anne with a steady arm. Then, gradually, as though quelled by that slender arm which was so persistent in its steadiness and the cool cheek pressed against her own, Anne’s sobbing began to die away, the convulsions to lessen, to stop altogether. After several minutes of comparative quiet Anne disengaged herself from Ariel’s clasp and sat up. The rouge on her cheeks, if there had been any, was soaked away. She was white, like a Pierrot, in spite of all her weeping. When she began speaking, the natural huskiness of her voice was roughened by past sobs into a raspingness hardly human. “See here, Ariel! I’ve been thinking about you, coming toward you, wanting to get to you, hours and hours. Not any girl at Smith. Not Mother. Nobody but you, Ariel! You are the only one who can help me and keep me from killing myself.” Ariel took Anne’s words literally and believed them. She knew that Anne was here for her to save from death. Why she was the one who had to do it, didn’t matter. It might be, however, for the simple reason that she herself was simple enough and real enough to be able to believe in the stark danger which threatened Anne before it had been demonstrated by fulfillment.