"Don't do that, Dosia! You'll take the skin off. Stop it!"
Lois, alarmed, put her arm around the girl, trying to push the towel away from her. "Dosia, sit down by me here on the bed—how you're trembling! What on earth is the matter? Dosia, you must not; you'll take the skin off your face."
"I want to take it off," whispered Dosia intensely. "I hate him, I hate him! I never want to see him again. I can't see him again. I threw the ring out in the hall somewhere; you'll have to find it. I couldn't have it in the room with me! Lois, you must tell him I can't see him again; promise me that I'll never see him again—promise, promise!" She clung to Lois as if her life depended on that protection.
"Yes, yes, dear, I promise," said Lois, with a sudden warmth of sympathy such as she had never before felt for the girl. This situation, this feeling, she could comprehend—it might have been her own in similar case. She had known girls before who had been engaged for but a day or a week, and then revolted—it was not so new a circumstance as the world fancies.
She drew the towel now from Dosia's relaxed fingers, and held her closer as she said:
"There, be quiet, Dosia, and don't make yourself ill. I don't see what that poor man is going to do—of course he'll feel dreadfully; but you can't help that now—it's a great deal better than finding out the mistake later. I'll tell him not to come again; I promise you. Of course, I'll have to speak to Justin—I don't know what he will say!" Lois broke into a rueful smile. "Dosia, Dosia! What scrape will you get into next?"
"Isn't it dreadful!" gasped poor Dosia. She sat up straight and looked at Lois with tragic eyes.
"Now two men have kissed me. I can never get over that in this world. I can never be nice again—no one can ever think I'm nice again! No one can ever—love me in this world!" She buried her hot face in Lois' bosom, sobbing tearlessly against that new shelter, in spite of the other's incoherent words of comfort, so unalterably, so inherently a woman made to be loved that the loss of the dream of it was like the loss of existence. After a moment Dosia went on brokenly:
"It seems so strange. Things begin, and you think they are going to turn out to be something you want very much, and then all of a sudden they end—and there is nothing more. Everything is all beginning—and then it ends—there is nothing more. And now I can never be really nice again!"
"Nonsense! You'll feel very differently about it all after a while," said Lois sensibly.