And covering her face with her hands, she ended her sentence with a paroxysm of tearless grief.
In a moment Rupert was beside her, "What is it, what is the matter, Dolly? Dolly, speak to me; there is nothing on earth I will not do for you if you only tell me what you want."
She lifted her head and looked at him as a person might who had just returned from a journey through some strange and troubled land.
For many a day that look haunted Rupert Halling; it will haunt him at intervals through the remainder of his life. She put back her hair which had fallen over her face, with a painful slowness of movement foreign to her temperament. She opened her lips to speak, but her tongue refused its office.
Then Rupert frightened ran into the dining-room, and brought her wine, but she put it aside, and he fetched her water, and held the tumbler for her to drink.
As if there had been some virtue in the draught, her eyes filled with tears—heavy tears that gathered on her lashes and then fell lingeringly drop by drop; but soon the trouble found quicker vent, and she broke into an almost hysterical fit of weeping.
"Cry, dear, cry, it will do you good," he said as she strove vainly to check her sobs. "Do not try to speak at present, you will only make yourself worse."
But Dolly would speak.
"I am so sorry you should have seen me like this" she panted. "I did not mean to be so stupid."
He was standing beside her bathing her hair and forehead with eau de cologne, but his hand shook as he poured out the scent, and he felt altogether, as he defined the sensation to himself, "nervous as a woman."