After a pause he said, and she knew, with all the pain of it, what the relief of speaking must be: “I guess at things. I always feel if she is hiding things.” “Perhaps you are only imagining.” “I wish I could think it; but I know not. I know what is happening to her.” He was still wrenching away at the heather, tossing aside the purple sprays with their finely tangled sandy roots. Suddenly he put his head on his knees, hiding his face. “Oh, Gavan! Oh, don’t be so unhappy,” Eppie whispered, drawing near him, helpless and awe-struck. “How can I be anything but unhappy when the person I care most for is miserable--miserable, and I am so far from her?” His shoulders heaved; she saw that he was weeping. Eppie, at first, gazed, motionless, silent, frozen with a child’s quick fear of demonstrated grief. A child’s quick response followed. Throwing her arms around him, she too burst into tears. It was strange to see how the boy’s reserves melted in the onslaught of this hot, simple sympathy. He turned to her, hiding his face on her shoulder, and they cried together. “I didn’t want to make you unhappy, too,” Gavan said at last in a weakened voice. His tears were over first and he faintly smiled as he met Robbie’s alarmed, beseeching eyes. Robbie had been scrambling over them, scratching, whining, licking their hands and cheeks in an exasperation of shut-out pity. “I’m not nearly so unhappy as when you don’t say anything and I know that you are keeping things back,” Eppie choked, pushing Robbie away blindly. “I’d much rather _be_ unhappy if you are.” It was Gavan, one arm around the rejected Robbie, who had to dry her tears, trying to console her with: “Perhaps I did imagine more than there actually is. One can’t help imagining--at this distance.” He smiled at her, as he had smiled at Robbie, and holding her hand, he went on: “She is so gentle, and so lonely, and so unhappy. I could help her out there. Here, I am so helpless.” “Make her come here!” Eppie cried. “Write at once and make her come. Send a wire, Gavan. Couldn’t she be here very soon, if you wired that she must--_must_ come? I wouldn’t bear it if I were you.” “She can’t come. She must stay with my father.” All the barriers were down now, so that Eppie could insist: “She would rather be with you. You want her most.” “Yes, I want her most. But he needs her most,” said Gavan. “He is extravagant and weak and bad. He drinks and he gambles, and if she left him he would probably soon ruin himself--and us; for my mother has no money. She could not leave him if she would. And though he is often very cruel to her, he wants her with him.” Gavan spoke with all his quiet, but he had flushed as if from a still anger. “Money is an odious thing, Eppie. That’s what I want to do, as soon as I can: make money for her.” He added presently: “I pray for strength to help her.”