"Well, you know all the rest. When you were engaged and she more than friend, I had hoped for it, and I saw that my turn might come; that I might step into Kathy's vacated shoes, so to speak; that we might be friends, and all my dreams be fulfilled after all. I began then to let myself know that I did care, for I had tried to help myself before by pretending that I didn't. I wouldn't do anything to make you like me. If you were to like me, you would of yourself; all the joy of having you care for me would be in having made no effort. And the dream did come true. I saw more and more that you cared. To-day I feel it, like sunshine." Odd still stared at her, and again through sudden tears she smiled at him. "Only--isn't it strange?--things are always so; it must be, too, that I am weak, overwrought, for I feel so sad, as though I were at the bottom of the sea, and looking up through it at the sun." "Great heavens!" muttered Odd. He looked at her for a silent moment, then suddenly putting his arm around her neck, he drew her to him. He did not kiss her, but he said, leaning his head against hers-- "And I--so unworthy!" "No, no," said Hilda, and with a little sigh, "not unworthy, dear Peter." "I, dully stumbling about your exquisite soul," Peter went on, pressing her head more closely to his. "Ah, Hilda! Hilda!" "What, dear friend?" "I cannot tell you." "Unkind; I tell you everything." "You can tell me everything. You can tell me how much you have cared for me, how much you care. I cannot tell you how much I care. I cannot tell you how infinitely dear you are to me." He had spoken, her face hidden from him in its nearness; now, turning his head he kissed her hair, and frowning, he looked at her and kissed her on the lips. Hilda drew back and rose to her feet. A subtle change, perplexity deepened, crossed her face, but, standing before him, she looked down at him and he saw that her trust rose as to a test. She put her hands out as though from an impulse to lay them on his shoulders; then, as an instinct within the impulse seemed to warn her, though leaving her clear look untouched, she clasped them together and said gravely-- "You may tell me. You are infinitely dear to _me_." Odd still frowned. Her terrible innocence gave him a sense of helpless baseness. "I may tell you how much I love you?" and he too rose and stood before her. "I have always loved you," said Hilda, with her grave look. "I love you now as much as I did when I was a child." The impossible height where she placed him beside her made Odd's head swim. He felt himself caught up for a moment into the purity of her eyes, and looking into them he came close to her. "My angel! My angel!" he hardly breathed. "Dear Peter," and the tears came into the pure eyes. And, at the sight, the heaven brimmed with loveliest human weakness, the love unconscious but all revealed, Odd was conscious only of a dizzy descent from impossibility, the crash of the inevitable.