She had been crying, and the disorder of her hair suggested that she had cried with her head buried in a pillow, after the stifled feminine fashion. Her face was most pathetically disfigured by tears; the disfigurement almost charming of youth and loveliness; but she looked ill, too. The white cheek and the heavy eyelids, the unsteady sweetness of her lips showed that an extreme of physical exhaustion, as well as the tempest of grief, had swept her beyond all thought of self-control, beyond all wish for it. The afternoon's unpleasantness had been merely the last straw. The long endurance of the past month--the past months indeed--that had asked no pity, had been hardly conscious of a claim on pity--was transformed by her knowledge of near love and sympathy to a quivering sensibility. There was no reticence in her glance. He was the one she turned to, the one she trusted, the only one who understood and loved her in the whole world. Odd saw all this as the supreme confidence of a supremely reserved nature looked at him from her eyes. He met her, stooping his head to hers, and, like a child, she put up her face to be kissed. When he had kissed her, he drew back. A sudden horrible weakness almost overcame him. "Sit down, dear; no, I will walk about a bit. I have been playing the fiery _jeune premier_ to such an extent this afternoon that dramatic restlessness is in keeping." Hilda smiled faintly, and her eyes followed him as he took a few turns up and down the room. "You look so badly," he said, pausing before her; "how do you feel?" "Not myself; or, perhaps, too much myself." Hilda tried to smile, stretching out her arms with a long shaken sigh. "I feel weak and foolish," she added, clasping her hands on her knee. "It is all right, you know. He apologized profusely." "How did you make him do that?" "I told him the truth, including the fact of his own despicableness." "And he believed it?" "I helped him to the belief by a pretty thorough thrashing." "Oh!" cried Hilda. "He deserved it, dear." "But--I had exposed myself to it; he thought himself justified." "I had to disabuse him of that thought. He bawled out something like a challenge under the salutary lesson, but when I promptly seconded the suggestion--insisted on the extreme satisfaction it would give me to have a shot at him--the bourgeois strain came out. He fairly whined. I was disappointed. I had bloodthirsty desires." "Oh, I am very glad he whined then! Don't speak of such horrors. You know I am hysterical." Odd still stood before her, and Hilda put out her hand. "How can I thank you?" He put her hand to his lips, not looking at her but down at the heavy folds of her white dress; it had a shroud-like look that gave him a shudder. Hilda's life seemed shroud-like, shutting her out from all brightness, from all love--love hers by right, and only hers. "You know, you know that I would do anything for you," he said.