A little shivering sob was the answer. Frances went in, and closed the door. Nola was lying face downward on her pillow, like a child, and Frances found on putting out her comforting hand that the fickle little lady's bolster was wet with tears. She sat on the bedside and tried gently to turn Nola's face toward her. That brought on a storm of tears and moanings, and agonized burrowing of her face into the pillow. "Oh, I feel so mean and wicked!" she cried. "If I hadn't been so deceitful and treacherous and--and--and everything, maybe all this sorrow wouldn't have come to us!" Frances said nothing. She had found one hot hand, tear-wet from lying under Nola's cheek, and this she held tenderly, feeling it best to let the tears of penitence purge the sufferer's soul in their world-old way. After a time Nola became quieter. She shifted in the bed, and moved over to give Frances more room, and put up her arms to draw her friend down for the kiss of forgiveness which she knew would not be denied. Afterwards she sat up in bed, and brushed her hair back from her throbbing forehead with her palms. "Oh, it aches and aches--_so!_" she said. "I'll bind a cold towel around it, dear; that always used to ease it, you remember?" "Not my head, Frances--my heart, my heart!" It was better so, Frances understood. Penitence that brings only a headache is like plating over brass; it cannot long conceal the baseness of the thing that lies beneath. "Time is the only remedy for that, Nola," she said, her own words slow and sad. "Do you think I've sinned past forgiveness because I--because--I love him?" Nola's voice trembled with earnestness. "He is free, to love and be loved as it may fall, Nola. I told you he was mine, but I thought then that I was claiming him from death. He will live. He never has asked me to marry him; maybe he never will. When he recovers, he may turn to you--who can tell?" "No, it's only you that he thinks of, Frances. When I was watching by him he opened his eyes, and you should have seen the look in them when he saw me instead of you. He struggled to sit up and look for you, and he called your name, sharp and frightened, as if he thought somebody had taken you away from him forever." Frances did not need that assurance to quiet any fear of his loyalty. She had spoken the truth, only because it was the truth, but not to give Nola hope. For hope she knew there was not any, nor any love, to come to Nola out of that man's heart. "We'll not talk of it," Frances said. "I must, I can't let anything stand between us, Frances. If I'd been fair, all the way through--but I wasn't. I wasn't fair about Major King, and I wasn't fair this time. I was fool enough to think that if you were out of the way for a little while I could make him love me! He'd never love me, never in a million years!"