she
wished to cry. She cried because it was the easiest and most
satisfactory way she knew of relieving the tenseness in her throat.
She burrowed her face in the pillow and cried hard, and then turned
over on her pig-tails and sobbed awhile. It did not make any
difference, here in the dark, whether the tears made lines down her
face or not--whether or not they made her eyes red, and, worst of all,
her nose red.

From sobbing, Miss Winthrop dwindled to sniveling, and there she
stopped. She was not the kind to snivel very long--even by herself.
She did not like the sound of it. So she took her wadded handkerchief
and jammed it once into each eye and jabbed once at each cheek, and
then, holding it tight in her clenched fist, made up her mind to stop.
For a minute or two an occasional sob broke through spasmodically; but
finally even that ceased, and she was able to stare at the ceiling
quite steadily. By that time she was able to call herself a little
fool, which was a very good beginning for rational thinking.

There was considerable material upon which to base a pretty fair
argument along this line. Admitting that Don Pendleton was what she
had been crying about,--a purely hypothetical assumption for the sake
of a beginning,--she was able to start with the premise that a woman
was a fool for crying about any man. Coming down to concrete facts,
she found herself supplied with even less comforting excuses. If she
had been living of late in a little fool's paradise, why, she had made
it for herself. She could not accuse him of having any other part in
it than that of merely being there. If she went back a month, or three
months, or almost a year, she saw herself either taking the initiative
or, what was just as bad, passively submitting. Of course, her motive
had been merely to help him in an impersonal sort of way. She had
seen that he needed help, but she had not dreamed the reason for it.
She had no warning that he had been deserted by her who should have
helped him. She had no way of knowing about this other. Surely that
ignorance was not her fault.

Here is where she jabbed her handkerchief again into each eye and lay
back on her pig-tails long enough to get a fresh grip upon herself.
Her skin grew hot, then cold, then hot again. It really had all been
more the fault of this other than Mr. Pendleton's. She had no business
to go away and leave him for some one else to care for. She had no
business to leave him, anyw