"No--no, of course you are not," said Maisie, making (to say the least of it) an affirmation the truth of which was not wholly obvious. For the girl's tears dropped steadily upon her white gown, a great one even falling warm upon Maisie's hand at her waist, while all her slender body was shaken with sobs. "It was only--" Kate began, and then stopped. Maisie sighed as she sat down on the white bed, which, as was its occupant's custom, had been made up with military precision quite an hour before. She drew Kate down beside her gently till the girl's head rested on her shoulders. "There, there, my lamb," she whispered, soothingly, when at last Kate found what most she wanted--a soft and comfortably sympathetic surface to cry upon. Maisie's hand passed lightly over the shapely head with its straying and enticing thatch of dark love-locks, and her voice crooned and cooed over her friend like a dove over its mate in the nest. Then for a long time she continued to hush the girl in her arms, as if she had been but a little ailing child. Once there came the sound of a foot heavily masculine in the passage, and a hand was laid on the latch. Kate made a motion to rise and dry her face, but Maisie's arms held her tight. "Go away, William! Go away at once!" she cried, with instant change of tone, her voice ringing out in such imperious fashion that Will Gordon, her husband, fled back to the sitting-room, feeling that he had just saved himself on the brink of some absolutely fatal mistake. Yet all the while Maisie offered her friend not a word of sympathy, only the comforting of silent understanding, the touch of loving lips and hands, and the pressure of loving arms. Kate (she said to herself) would tell her what she wished at her own time. Maisie had a woman's tact and did not press for an explanation of a girl's wayward moods, as even the wisest of men would have done on such an occasion. "Oh, he might have been killed," at last Kate's words came in a rushing whisper, as she lifted her face a little higher on Maisie's shoulder. "And I had sent him away so cruelly. And when he came back I never told him that I was glad to see him, Maisie. I snatched away my hand." She added the last words as if that indefensible action had only crowned a long series of enormities. "Well," answered her friend, smiling very lovingly down at her, "he is not gone yet. Come back and say it now. I dare say he will forgive you, if you look at him like that." But Kate only sadly shook her head, a little reproachfully that such a revolutionary proposal should come from one of Maisie's pretended sympathy and understanding. "How can I go back?" she said, hopelessly. "They _saw_ me crying, and they would sit and look at me all the time--like--like--" (and Kate paused while she searched the universe for a comparison to express the most utter and abject stupidity) "well, just like men."