"My father doesn't make mistakes."
"Oh, doesn't he?" snorted Elizabeth, unable to keep out of the debate longer. "What has he been doing all these years but make mistakes? And now he is too selfish, he isn't man enough, to save his daughter from the mess he has made. He has ruined his own life and isn't happy till he has ruined yours."
Nancy's eyes flashed with anger.
"I am going now," she said. "I won't stay in your house and hear such words. My father is right. Everything he does is right. I am not a foreigner. I hate your ways, I hate your ugly clothes, all your talk about love! My father is not selfish, he is not selfish! I won't listen to you. I am going home."
She clutched wildly at her dress. In her passion she was ready to tear off the despised garments. Then suddenly the sense of her own helplessness overwhelmed her and she knew that she had insulted these, almost her only friends in the world. The experiences of the day had been too great for her sorely tried nerves. She had fought against all she desired until there was no strength for battle left in her veins. She was standing, unable to move, wondering where she could go, how she could carry out her frantic threats of flight, when the instantly contrite Elizabeth threw her arms across the shoulders of the distracted girl.
"I was a beast, Nancy," she confessed; "do forgive me, do forget everything I said. I didn't mean to spoil your last evening here, but you seem to belong so much to us that I couldn't bear not to say what I could."
Helen too was plying her with penitent words.
Nancy's anger dissolved under their kindness. Their love touched her heart to the quick. She could not control herself longer; her pride, her anger, her remorse, were swept away in tears. She tried to struggle through a few incoherent phrases, but the tide of weeping drowned speech, drowned thoughts, drowned everything except a devastating pity which convulsed her breast with great heaving sobs and set her weeping again and again after the wells of her eyes had seemed eternally drained of tears.
There was no more the girls could say. They could only let her weep away the bitterness of her heart.
When she got up at the first glimmer of dawn and put on again her Chinese clothes, they did not stop her, for they knew quite well she had not slept and must find her bed wearisome after the vigil of the night. She would be better breathing the cool air of the morning. They let her go alone to purge her brain in the dew and the sunshine of the hills.