She did not wince, but there came into her young face a deeper pathos--and a wan, deprecating, pleading smile. She said: "Maybe love has washed it away--if it was there. It never seemed to touch me--any more than the dirt when I had to clean up my room." "You mustn't talk that way. Why you are perfectly calm! You don't cry or feel repentant. You don't seem to care." "It's so--so past--and dead. I feel as if it were another person. And it was, Rod!" He shook his head, frowning. "Let's not talk about it," he said harshly. "If only I could stop thinking about it!" She effaced herself as far as she could, living in the same room with him. She avoided the least show of the tenderness she felt, of the longing to have her wounds soothed. She lay awake the whole night, suffering, now and then timidly and softly caressing him when she was sure that he slept. In the morning she pretended to be asleep, let him call her twice before she showed that she was awake. A furtive glance at him confirmed the impression his voice had given. Behind her pale, unrevealing face there was the agonized throb of an aching heart, but she had the confidence of her honest, utter love; he would surely soften, would surely forgive. As for herself--she had, through loving and feeling that she was loved, almost lost the sense of the unreality of past and present that made her feel quite detached and apart from the life she was leading, from the events in which she was taking part, from the persons most intimately associated with her. Now that sense of isolation, of the mere spectator or the traveler gazing from the windows of the hurrying train--that sense returned. But she fought against the feeling it gave her. That evening they went to the theater--to see Modjeska in "Magda."