ved you hadn't really meant me to
read it----"

Making a crucial effort, she managed to speak.

"You--think I--did mean----"

"Well," he answered, with a helpless shrug, "you sent it! But it's
what's in it that really matters, isn't it? I could have pretended
anything in a note, I suppose, if I had written instead of coming.
But I found that what I most dreaded was meeting you again, and as
we've got to meet, of course, it seemed to me the only thing to do
was to blunder through a talk with you, somehow or another, and
get that part of it over. I thought the longer I put off facing
you, the worse it would be for both of us--and--and the more
embarrassing. I'm no good at pretending, anyhow; and the thing has
happened. What use is there in not being honest? Well?"

She did not try again to speak. Her state was lamentable: it was
all in her eyes.

Richard hung his head wretchedly, turning partly away from her.
"There's only one way--to look at it," he said hesitatingly, and
stammering. "That is--there's only one thing to do: to forget that
it's happened. I'm--I--oh, well, I care for Cora altogether. She's
got never to know about this. She hasn't any idea or--suspicion of
it, has she?"

Laura managed to shake her head.

"She never must have," he said. "Will you promise me to burn that
book now?"

She nodded slowly.

"I--I'm awfully sorry, Laura," he said brokenly. "I'm not idiot
enough not to see that you're suffering horribly. I suppose I have
done the most blundering thing possible." He stood a moment,
irresolute, then turned to the door. "Good-bye."

Hedrick had just time to dive into the hideous little room of the
multitudinous owls as Richard strode into the hall. Then, with the
closing of the front door, the boy was back at his post.

Laura stood leaning against the wall, the book clutched in her
arms, as Richard had left her. Slowly she began to sink, her eyes
wide open, and, with her back against the wall, she slid down
until she was sitting upon the floor. Her arms relaxed and hung
limp at her sides, letting the book topple over in her lap, and
she sat motionless.

One of her feet protruded from her skirt, and the leaping
firelight illumined it ruddily. It was a graceful foot in an old
shoe which had been re-soled and patched. It seemed very still,
that patched shoe, as if it might stay still forever. Hedrick knew
that Laura had not fainted, but he wished she would move her foot.

He went away.