"Poor Flora!"
He was standing beside her, gentle and pitying, longing to draw those shaking hands down from her hidden face: "You were always good to her," he said.
"No!" she said, in a smothered voice; "no." Then, suddenly, she turned toward him and sank against his shoulder. He felt the sob that shook her from head to foot. Instinctively, his arms went about her, and he held her close to him; he was silent, but he trembled and those passionate and sensitive eyebrows twitched with pain. It was only for a moment that he felt her sobbing weight—then she flung her head up, her face quivering and smeared with tears. "What a liar I am! I'm not crying about Flora at all. I'm just—unhappy. That's all."
He took her hand and held it to his lips, silently.
"I'm tired," she said; "—no! no! I won't lie—I won't lie! I'm not tired. I've been a fool! That's all. A fool."
"We all have to be fools, Fred, before we can be wise."
She had drawn away from him, with a broken laugh. "You don't know anything about it! You don't know what it's like to be a fool!"
"Don't I? I was a very big fool myself, once. But I'm so wise now that I'm glad of all the blows my folly gave me then. I'll tell you about it, one of these days."
He told her as they drove back to town. "And," he ended, "I can see that the best thing that ever happened to me was to have Kate jilt me."