A little shivering sob was the answer. Frances went in, and closed the door. Nola was lying face downward on her pillow, like a child, and Frances found on putting out her comforting hand that the fickle little lady’s bolster was wet with tears. She 305 sat on the bedside and tried gently to turn Nola’s face toward her. That brought on a storm of tears and moanings, and agonized burrowing of her face into the pillow.
“Oh, I feel so mean and wicked!” she cried. “If I hadn’t been so deceitful and treacherous and—and—and everything, maybe all this sorrow wouldn’t have come to us!”
Frances said nothing. She had found one hot hand, tear-wet from lying under Nola’s cheek, and this she held tenderly, feeling it best to let the tears of penitence purge the sufferer’s soul in their world-old way. After a time Nola became quieter. She shifted in the bed, and moved over to give Frances more room, and put up her arms to draw her friend down for the kiss of forgiveness which she knew would not be denied.
Afterwards she sat up in bed, and brushed her hair back from her throbbing forehead with her palms.
“Oh, it aches and aches—so!” she said.
“I’ll bind a cold towel around it, dear; that always used to ease it, you remember?”
“Not my head, Frances—my heart, my heart!”
It was better so, Frances understood. Penitence that brings only a headache is like plating over brass; it cannot long conceal the baseness of the thing that lies beneath.
“Time is the only remedy for that, Nola,” she said, her own words slow and sad.
“Do you think I’ve sinned past forgiveness because 306 I—because—I love him?” Nola’s voice trembled with earnestness.