Submissive before his tone she replied that she was hungry; that she would be ready, too. She had donned blouse and skirt and stocking and shoes and finished braiding her hair when he re-entered. He showed her a tin basin outside filled with icy water for her face and hands. And then they sat down in silence to breakfast. Once he had dreamed what their first meal together in that room would be like. This morning when she insisted upon pouring the coffee and scorched her hand in the attempt and chided him for careless housekeeping, pain showed in his smile. But she did not immediately understand. She only realized how sombre he was; how thin he looked and tired. Again her eyes went to the bandage around his head. It had a fascination for her, even though it filled her with repulsion for a decision which, she knew now, might have been hers, two days before. But eventually it was to that topic she turned. "You have been very good to me," she said. "Far better than I was to you--the day before yesterday. I can never hope to thank you enough for coming to help me." Wistful she had seen him, and grave and sober-eyed, but never sad until now. "I should have helped you," she went on. "I would have, only I had come expecting . . . I thought to see----" Two days before when she alighted from her father's car, her heart a tumult in her ears, she could have told him perhaps. She could not tell him now. "I am not used to such things," she finished weakly. "I know," was all he replied, but the words were final, somehow. They thrust her back, roughly, from any share in his thoughts. They ate again in silence. "Miriam would have helped," she forgot herself and argued aloud once. "She would not have failed. But--blood sickens me, I think." "It was neither a pretty nor prepossessing sight," he helped to excuse her, but excuse nor pardon was not what she wanted. "I told you that you would find out someday," she murmured. "I warned you you would wake suddenly and see how shallow I am." Until she had finished eating he would not talk. But she had finished now. He faced her with an abruptness that startled her. "Waking has been no sudden thing with me! I finished with dreams a long time back, but you are what you have been always in my thoughts. It's conditions I've waked to, not you!" With unwitting gruffness he had sometimes spoken to her, but never with constrained vehemence such as that.