Hilda leaned her head against his shoulder and wept. After the frozen nightmare moment, the old kindness was a delicious contrast; she almost forgot the purport of her journey, though she knew that she was crying. Odd stroked her long hair; her tears slightly amused and slightly alarmed him, even while the pathos of the affection they revealed touched him deeply. "Did you come alone?" he asked. Hilda nodded. "That was a very plucky thing to do. I thank you for it. There, can't you smile at me? Don't cry." "Oh, I love you _so_ much, I can hardly bear it." Peter felt uncomfortable. The capacity for suffering revealed in these words gave him a sense of responsibility. Poor child! Would her lot in life be to cry over people who were not worth it? "I shall come back some day, Hilda." Hilda stopped crying, and Peter was relieved by the sobs' cessation. "I have a wandering fit on me just now; you understand that, don't you?" She held his hand tightly. She could not speak; her heart swelled so at his tone of mutual understanding. "I am going to see my sister. I haven't seen her for five years; but long before another five years are passed I shall be here again, and the thing I shall most want to see when I get back will be your little face." "But you will be different then, I will be different, we will both be changed." Hilda put her hands before her face and sobbed again. Peter was silent for a moment, rather aghast at the child's apprehension of the world's deepest tragedy. He could not tell her that they would be unchanged--he the man of thirty-five, she the girl of seventeen. Poor little Hilda! Her grief was but too well founded, and his thoughts wandered for a moment with Hilda's words far away from Hilda herself. Hilda wiped her eyes and sat upright. Odd looked at her. He had a keen sense of the unconventional in beauty, and her tears had not disfigured her small face--had only made it strange. He patted her cheek and smiled at her. "Cheer up, little one!" She evidently tried to smile back. "I am afraid you have idealized me, my child--it's a dangerous faculty. I am a very ordinary sort of person, Hilda; you must not imagine fine things about me nor care so much. I'm not worth one of those tears, poor little girl!" It was difficult to feel amused before her solemn gaze; a sage prophecy of inevitable recovery would be brutal; to show too much sympathy equally cruel. But the reality of her feeling dignified her grief, and he found himself looking gravely into her large eyes. "You're not worth it?" she repeated. "No, really." "I don't imagine things about you." "Well, I am glad of that," said Peter, feeling rather at a loss. "I love you dearly," said Hilda, with a certain air of dreary dignity; "you are you. I don't have to imagine anything." Odd put her hand to his lips and kissed it gently. "Thank you, my dear child. I love you too, and certainly I don't have to imagine anything."