"Oh, don't!" said Hilda. She drew her hand away, not lifting her head. "Her heart is broken. I am all that she said." "Her heart is not broken!" cried Odd, in rather desperate accents. "I could swear to it! She is a cruel, heartless girl!" "What would you have asked of her? You were cruel to her." "I am glad of it." And as Hilda made no reply to this statement, he stooped to her again, imploring: "Will you not look at me? Look up, dearest; tell me again that you love me." "I am already in the dust," said Hilda, after a pause. "You shall not sink to a morbid acceptance of that venom!" cried Odd; he took her by the shoulders with almost a suggestion of shaking her. "Sit up. Listen to me," he said, raising her and looking down at her stricken face, his hands on her shoulders. "I have loved you passionately for months. She was right in one thing; I had better have told her, not have fumbled with that fatally misplaced idea of honor. You may have loved me, but I was as unconscious of it as you were. To-day you were worn out, terrified, miserable. Just see it with one grain of common charity, of common sense, psychology, physiology if you will, for you are ill, wretchedly weak and off balance, my darling child!" Odd added, sitting down beside her; and he would have drawn her to him, but Hilda repeated-- "Don't." "You felt my pity, my sympathy," Odd went on, holding her hands. "You felt my love, poor little one, unconsciously. You turned to me like the child you were and are. You were starving for kindness, consolation--for love--you came to your friend, the friend you trusted, and you found more than a friend. The love you owned so beautifully was a truth too high for the hearer." "Oh! I did not dream that you loved me. I did not dream that I _loved_ you!" Hilda wailed suddenly. "Thank God that you own to that!" Odd ejaculated. "That does not clear me," she retorted. "No, no; I was a fool. You, the man engaged to my sister! I should have felt the danger, the disloyalty of your interest. I was a fool not to feel it! And that appeal I made to you--it was no more or less that sickening self-pity, that dastardly whine over my own pathos, that morbid sentimentality! I see it all, all! I was trying to make you care for me, love me. I suppose crimes are usually committed by people off balance physically, but crimes are crimes, and I am wicked. I hate myself!" she sobbed, bending again her face upon her hands.