People can usually be brave and grim in the presence of defeat and peril and hostility. It is the kind word, the sudden victory, the discovery of a friend that breaks one down. Even Kedzie wept.
She wept all over Jim Dyckman's waistcoat, sat on his lap and swallowed throat-lumps and tears and tugged at his cuff-links with her little fingers.
Then she looked up at him and blushed and kissed him fiercely, hugging him with all the might of her arms. He was troubled by the first frenzy she had ever shown for him, and he might have learned how much more than a merely pretty child she was if she had not suddenly felt an icy hand laid on her hands, unclasping them.
A cold arm seemed to bend about her throat and drag her back. She slid from Dyckman's knees, gasping:
“Oh!”
She could not become Mrs. Jim Dyckman, because she was Mrs. Thomas Gilfoyle.
Dyckman was astounded and frightened by her action. He put his hand out, but she unclenched his fingers from her wrist, mumbling:
“Don't—please!”
“Why not? What's wrong with you, child?”
How could she tell him? What could she do? She must do a lot of thinking. On one thing she was resolved: that she would not give Dyckman up. She would find Gilfoyle and get quit of him. They had been married so easily; there must be an easy way of unmarrying.