Her bright though slightly grave smile failed to restore him to his usual attitude of _bon camaraderie_. He smiled and kissed her, but he was conscious of underlying soreness, conscious, too, that he might lose his temper with Katherine; he had never lost it with Alicia. Katherine's very superiority made it imperative to have things out with her. Kindly resignation was an impossibility. He realized that not to admire Katherine would make life with her intolerable. She would immediately perceive reservations and she would revolt against them. He wondered whether he should be the one to broach the subject of Hilda's ill-treatment, and was amazed at a certain embarrassed shrinking, as from a feeling too deep for words, that kept him silent as they walked along, taking a short cut to the Place de l'Etoile, where the Arc stood in almost cardboard clearness on the pale cold sky. It was Katherine who spoke-- "Hilda told me of your kindness yesterday. It touched her very much." In some subtle way it irritated Odd to hear Katherine vouch for Hilda's feeling. "And Hilda told you that I had been admitted into the mystery of the Archinard family?" His voice was even enough, but it held a certain keenness that Katherine was quick to recognize. "You don't think their mystery creditable, do you? Nor do I, Peter. But mamma knows nothing of it, nor papa; and I have tried to dissuade Hilda from the first." "My dear Katherine, the child has worked like a galley-slave for you all! Your necessities were more potent facts than your dissuasions, I fancy!" Katherine gave a look at the fine severity of the profile beside her. She felt herself arraigned, and her impulse was towards rebellion. However, her voice was gentle, submissive even, as she answered him-- "I know it must look badly to you--cruel even. But, Peter, don't you know--you do know--how things _grow_ around one? One can hardly tell where the definite wrongdoing comes in, or rather the definite submission to a wrong situation." This was so true, that Katherine felt immediately the mollified quality of his voice as he answered-- "I know. I know submission was forced upon you, no doubt. But I had rather you had not submitted when once the situation grew definite. And I wish, Katherine, that you had helped her in making the situation easier. Granting that you could give her no material aid--granting that her faculty is good luck--still the actual burden might have been lightened." Odd paused; he could not say his thoughts outright--tell her that the comparative luxury of her life and her mother's was outrageous, shocking to him now that he understood its source.