“Walter----” Della was standing in the light now and Cecily could see that her little pink face so made for powder and smiles was streaked with tears and still distorted with some violent emotion. “Walter’s home, I guess. He doesn’t know I came here. I thought he wouldn’t know, so that’s why I came to you. He thinks I’m afraid of you and wouldn’t dare to come. But I showed him I did come here and he doesn’t know where I am and----” “Hush,” said Cecily, “you’re hysterical, Della. Have you been walking in the snow in those slippers?” She looked down at the slim black satin slippers from which caked snow was already melting. “Come upstairs to my room and get dry. Then,” she rode over an immense impulse to refuse sanctuary to Della, “then you can tell me all about it.” Della followed her. But she could not be silent. “I came to you, Cecily, and I know you don’t like me very well, and I don’t know as I blame you, because you and I aren’t like each other at all, and I’ve always been scared to death of you, but what could I do, for I couldn’t go to any of the girls because they don’t know anything about things like this--at least, I hope they don’t, although perhaps the married ones have troubles of their own. It isn’t as if I were older and I thought, of course, Walter would be nice and sympathetic and he wasn’t at all, but he was so stern and cross and scolding--and I can’t be scolded and I won’t have it.” She ran on, plunging through incoherent phrases and sentences, with the tears running down her foolish little cheeks. Cecily looked at her in amazement. “Hush,” she said again, “you’ll make yourself ill. What is it, Della? Have you had a quarrel with Walter? Is that it?” “That’s only a little bit of it,” sobbed Della, as the cause of her trouble rose again to bring her horror, “only a little of it. Although I thought he’d be nice to me! I thought he’d be nice to me; a girl gives up a lot when she marries a man, and it’s pretty hard to have him turn against her.” Cecily had her upstairs now, sitting on her chaise longue, and she was forcing quilted slippers upon her. “If you really want to tell me, Della, you must stop being hysterical and begin at the beginning. And you mustn’t be quite so noisy or you’ll wake the babies in the nursery.” Della shuddered from head to foot. “That’s it!” she cried, her eyes distended. “Babies! Cecily, Cecily, they say I’m going to have a baby and I won’t, I won’t! And Walter is so cruel about it.” Cecily was no longer naïve about such things. She had heard many conversations which had told her unwilling ear much about involuntary motherhood. But never had she seen such horror as was Della’s. Mixed with her recoil from the violence and the ugly mood of the girl was a queer feeling of responsibility that was almost pride. Della had come to her. “You’re going to have a baby, Della? Why, you silly girl, that’s the nicest thing that could happen to you. I’m awfully glad.”