There was no reply. She did not even look up at him. Gradually, though, her weeping ceased. Judd walked up and down the room, smoking an enormously long, black cigar, occasionally stopping in his heavy stride to look at her. Presently she sat up, blinking in the light, her face still swollen with her tears. A certain prettiness still remained to her; but it was the pathetic prettiness of the exotic the petals of which are dropping, dropping.
"Is it anything that I can help, Tony?" asked Judd in a tone that was not lacking in kindliness, as he stopped and stood before her. She shook her head wearily.
"No," she answered him in a quiet, tear-hoarsened tone. "It is nothing that you can help. It is all my own fault."
Judd flicked the long ash of his cigar to the rug and studied her with a puckered but not scowling brow.
"I don't want to stir up or start anything anew," he said, not unkindly, "but may I ask what it is that is your fault?"
She crushed her wet handkerchief between her palms and looked up at him with vague eyes.
"Oh, everything," she replied, with a shrug of utter weariness. "Few women could be found in all the world tonight, I believe, who have made such an utter mess of their lives as I have of mine. But I am not so unfair, thank God, as to blame it upon anybody but myself. It is a compensation, at any rate, to be able to see things in their true light."
"You are ill, aren't you?" Judd asked her, with a solicitude that was obviously genuine.
"I don't know—I think so," she replied. "I am very tired—I know that. Tired of myself, of everything."
"You need a change," suggested Judd. "You ought to go away somewhere. But I don't want you to go alone. I am pretty busy, but I'll chuck everything to go with you if you want me to, Tony."