Rosamund realized vaguely what had happened. She was a loving woman, but she was a practical one, too. There were people in the house who must not see June just at this crisis. She was much the larger and stronger of the two girls, and she bent down and attempted to raise the prostrate figure.
“June, listen. We were going out driving at five. Mary Moore may be down at any moment. Come quick; she mustn’t see you. She’s the worst gossip in San Francisco. Come, I’ll help you.”
She dragged the girl up with an arm around her, hurried her to the top of the stairs, along the hall, and into her room. There she let her fall into an arm-chair, and, stepping back, locked the door.
In the sweet-scented, airy room, with its thin muslin curtains softening the hot brilliancy of the landscape, June sat in the arm-chair, silent and motionless, her face pinched. Rosamund, who had never seen her sister like this, did not know what to do, and in despair, resorted to the remedies she had been accustomed to using when her mother had been ill. She softly rubbed June’s temples with cologne and fanned her. Finally she knelt down by her side and said tenderly,
“What is it, Junie, dear? Tell it to me.”
“I have told it to you,” said June. “He’s not free; that’s all. You all said it, but I wouldn’t believe it. Now he’s said it and I’ve got to believe it.”
She spoke in a high, hard voice, and Rosamund, kneeling on the floor, put her arms round her, and said with ingenuous consolation,
“But now you know it, the worst’s over.”
“Everything’s over,” said June dully.
Her eyes fell to her lap, and there, in one hand, she saw the wilted remains of the little bunch of wild flowers. A sudden realization of what her feelings had been when she picked them, how joyous, how shyly happy, how full of an elated pleasure of life, and what they were now, fell upon her with desolating force. She gave a cry, and, turning from her sister, pressed her face against the back of the chair and burst into a storm of tears.