“You have thrown something gentle, a softness around me this morning. I can feel it. What is it, Ruth?”
“I don’t know, dear, unless it is my love for you.”
“It is something more. Your eyes look into mine as if you knew all about it and wished to comfort me.”
As I made no answer, she turned and looked down at me from her superb height.
“Tell me,” she said quite gently; “I shall not be angry. Tell me, do you know?”
“Yes, Louise, I know.”
She hesitated a moment as if she really had not believed it. Then she said slowly,
“If any other person on earth except you had told me that, I should die. I could not live in the knowledge. But you—well, your pity is not an insult somehow.”
“Because it is not pity, Louise,” I said steadily. “There is a difference between pity and sympathy. One is thrown at you—the other walks with you.”
She only pressed my hand gratefully. Suddenly she turned and said impulsively,