After this hot fit there came, as was natural, a cold one. Katherine went upstairs to her own room, the room divided from that other only by an open door, which they had occupied ever since they were children. Then her loneliness came down upon her like a pall. Even with the thrill of this news in all her frame, she felt a foolish impulse to go and call Stella--to tell Stella all about it, and hear her hasty opinion. Stella never hesitated to give her opinion, to pronounce upon every subject that was set before her with rapid, unhesitating decisions. She would have known exactly what to say on this subject. She would have taken the girl’s part; she would have asked what right a man had because he was your father to be such a tyrant. Katherine could hear the very tone in which she would have condemned the unnatural parent, and see the indignant gesture with which she would have lifted her head. And now there was nobody, nothing but silence; the room so vacant, the trim bed so empty and cold and white. It was like a bed of death, and Katherine shivered. The creature so full of impulses and hasty thoughts and crude opinions and life and brightness would never be there again. No, even if papa would forgive--even if he would receive her back, there would be no Stella any more. This would not be her place; the sisterly companionship was broken, and life could never more be what it had been. She sat down on the floor in the middle of the desolation and cried bitterly. What should she do without Stella? Stella had always been the first to think of everything; the suggestion of what to do or say had always been in her hands. Katherine did not deny to herself that she had often thought differently from Stella, that she had not always accepted either her suggestions or her opinions; but that was very different from the silence, the absence of that clear, distinct, self-assured little voice, the mind made up so instantaneously, so ready to pronounce upon every subject. Even in this way of looking at it, it will be seen that she was no blind admirer of her sister. She knew her faults as well as anyone. Faults! she was made up of faults--but she was Stella all the same.