She certainly brought more courage to the interview than he did, for he, the wronged one, found as he faced her now that he had not a word to say for himself. For the moment, she was master of the situation, and she began at once as if the whole thing were a matter of course.
Catching an involuntary glance of the Tenor's, she put both hands up to her head as the Boy would have done—so the Tenor, still confused between the two, expressed it to himself; and the old familiar gesture sent another pang through his heart. The water had washed the flaxen wig away, but the thick braids of her hair were still pinned up tightly, accounting for the shape of the remarkable head about which the Boy had so often, and, as was now evident, so recklessly, jested.
Her hair was very wet, and she began deliberately to take it down and unplait it.
"I could not always make it—my head, you know—the same shape," she said, answering his thought; "but you never noticed the difference, although you often looked. I used to wonder how you could look so intelligently and see so little"—and she glanced down at herself, so unmistakably a woman now that he knew. She had been like a conundrum, the answer to which you would never have guessed for yourself, but you see it at once when you hear it, and then it seems so simple. She was rather inclined to speak to the Tenor in a half pitying, patronizing way, as to a weak creature easily taken in; but he had recovered himself by this time, and something in his look and manner awed her, determined as she was, and she could not keep it up.
He moved farther from her, and then spoke in a voice made harsh by the effort it cost him to control it.
"Why have you done this thing?" he said sternly.
Her heart began to beat violently. The colour left her lips, and she sank into a chair, covered once more with shame and confusion. But, boy or girl, the charm of her peculiar personality was still the same, and it had its effect upon him even at that moment, indignant as he was, as she sat there, her long hair falling behind her, looking up at him with timid eyes and with tremulous mouth.
It was pitiful to see her so, and it softened him.
"What was your object?" he asked, relenting.
"Excitement—restlessness—if I had any," she faltered. "But I had no object. I am inventing one now because you ask me; it is an afterthought. I—I took the first step"—with a dry sob—"and then I—I just drifted on— on, you know—from one thing to another."