“Oh, don’t blame her too much—please, please! She is my only sister. Oh, what shall I do!”
Penelope flung herself on her bed and burst into a tempest of weeping. Perhaps those tears really saved her brain, for the poor girl was absolutely distracted. While she wept, and wept, and wept, Honora knelt by her, now and then patting her shoulder gently, now and then uttering a word of prayer to God. For this was the sort of occasion when Honora’s real religious training came strongly to the fore. She knew that her friend was tempted, that something had happened which could scarcely by any possibility come into her own life, and that if she did not stand by her now, she might fall.
“But I won’t let her,” thought the girl. “I’ll stick by her through thick and thin. I love her—I didn’t when I was at school, but I do now.”
After a time, however, poor Penelope’s tears ceased. Honora bent down and put her arm round her neck.
“I want to whisper something to you,” she said. “I want to confide something. I was not nice to you at school. I thought you, somehow, not a bit the sort of girl that I could ever care for. Then, when I saw you act as Helen of Troy and look so transformed, it seemed to me that my eyes were opened about you, and I wanted to have you here much more badly than I wished to have any other girl here; and since you came, I have learned to love you. Now I don’t love very, very easily—I mean I don’t give my deepest love. Having given it, however, I cannot possibly take it back—it is yours for what it is worth. I know something terrible has happened, and I want you to do right, not wrong, for it is never worth while to do wrong. I want you to try and understand that here, and to-night—it is always worth while to do right, and never worth while to do wrong. So choose the right, darling; I will ask God to help you.”
“But you don’t know—you can’t even guess!” sobbed Penelope.
“Do you think you could bring yourself to tell me? We are all alone here, in this dark room, for even the moon will soon set, and I am your true friend. Don’t you think you could just tell me everything?”
“Oh, I don’t know—no, I couldn’t—I couldn’t!” Penelope rose. “I have no words to thank you,” she continued. “You have comforted me, and perhaps—anyhow, I must have until the morning to think.”
“Very well,” said Honora, “I will go away to my own room and think of you all night, and pray for you, and in the morning, at seven o’clock, I will come back to you. Then, perhaps you will tell me—for you have got something to do, have you not?”
“I have to do something, or not to do something.”