"There was never anything--never. Any one who tells you anything different's telling you a lie. I'm not saying we weren't friends--" Violet smiled. "I'm not saying you were anything else. You can go on being friends. _I_ sha'n't care. Only don't you go saying I came between you--that's all." At that Winny fired. "As if I'd do any such a thing! I don't know what can have put it into your head." Violet laughed. "You should see _your face_," she said. "Why--any one could tell you were gone on him. They've only got to look at you." There are some insults, some insolences that cannot be answered. "You can believe that," said Winny, "if you like--if it makes you any happier. But your believing it won't make it true." She walked slowly, in her small dignity, to the chair where she had thrown down her hat. She took up the hat and put it on, deliberately, with a high bravery, before the glass. Then she turned to her friend and smiled at her. "It's all right," she said, "though you mightn't think it. Good-by." Whereupon Violet rushed at her and kissed her. "It isn't your fault, and it isn't mine, Winky," she whispered. "It's got to be, I tell you." She drew herself from the embrace, erect and rosy, in a sudden passion that had in it both triumph and despair. "Wild horses couldn't have torn him and me apart." * * * * * And Winny didn't blame her; even in the pain of the night that followed, when she lay awake in the bed she shared with Maudie Hollis, stifling her sobs lest she should waken Maudie, clutching the edge of the mattress where she had writhed out of Maudie's reach. For at the first sound of crying the proud beauty had turned to her friend and put her arms about her, and held her in a desolate and desolating embrace. "Don't cry, Winny; don't cry, dear. It isn't worth it," had been Maudie's consolation. For, though Winny hadn't said a word to her, she knew. And she had followed it up by declaring that she hated that Violet Usher; and she hated Ransome; she hated everybody who made little Winky, little darling Winky, cry. But Winky didn't hate them. It had to be. Nothing could be more beautiful in its simplicity than her acceptance of the event. And she didn't blame them. She didn't blame anybody. She had brought it on herself. The thing was as good as done last summer, when she had stopped Ranny making love to her. She had stopped it on purpose. She knew he couldn't afford to marry her, not for years and years; she knew he had been trying to tell her so; and it didn't seem fair, somehow, to let him get worked up all for nothing. That was how girls drove men mad. She considered that she was there to take care of Ranny, and she had seen, in her wisdom, that to keep Ranny well in hand would be less hard on him than to let him lose his head. Violet hadn't seen it, that was all.