"That he had made love to you most cruelly; that Katherine had come in upon the love scene; that she, too, was cruel--natural, though, wasn't it? Peter is rather hard on Katherine. And, to sum up, that you had been badly treated by the world in general, by himself in particular, and that he was very desperate and you painfully perfect, and--oh, a great many things." "Did he tell you that I loved him?" Hilda asked, looking down at her sweet-peas with, if that were possible, an added pallor. She wondered if it was demanded of her that she should humiliate herself before Peter's sister--tell her that she had made love to him. "My dear child," Mary's voice dropped to a graver key, "Peter trusts me, you know, and he ought to trust me. He told me that when he made love to you, you and he together found out that fact." Even Hilda's morbid self-doubt could not deny the essential truth of this point of view. "And now you won't marry him," Mary added, but in a matter-of-fact manner, and as if the subject were folded up and put away by that conclusive statement. "Let us walk along the path, my dear Hilda. What a delightful garden this is. I must have a pansy border like that in mine. Tell me, Hilda, why have you always so persistently and doggedly effaced yourself? Why did you never let anybody know you, and subside passively into the background _rôle_? I never knew you, I am sure, and if it hadn't been for Peter I shouldn't have known you now. He made me see things very clearly. The poor little caryatid cowering in a dark corner, and holding up a whole edifice on its shoulders." "How could he! Why will he always see things so? It makes me miserable." "Well, well; perhaps Peter's point of view would seem to you exaggerated. But, as I say, why did you never let me get a glimpse of you?" "I never tried to hide. Circumstances kept me apart. I loved my work." "Yes; it must have been charming work, in all its branches." Mary gave her a gravely gay glance. "When you did emerge from your shadows, why did you never talk--make an effect, like Katherine?" "Katherine makes effects without trying. She is effective, and people like her for herself. I was fitted for the dark corner. That is why I stayed there." "No, my dear, one can't explain the injustices of fortune by that comfortably, or uncomfortably, fatalistic philosophy. Noble natures get oddly jumped on in this world," Mary added reflectively. "The tragedy, of course, lies in being too noble for one's milieu, for then, not only does one renounce, but one is expected to, as a matter of course. Forgive me, Hilda, if I am a little coarsely frank. I am speaking, for the moment, with gloves off; I know the truth, and you may as well face it. It's a pity to be too noble; one should have just a spice of egotistic rebellion, else one is squashed flat to one's corner." "Peter found me," said Hilda, with a sad smile that evaded the "coarse" frankness.