“You don’t seem glad.”

Dickie made some sort of struggle.  Sheila could not quite make out its nature.  “I’m glad.  I’m so glad that it kind of—­hurts,” he said.

“Oh!” That at least was pleasant intelligence to a wounded pride.

Fortified, Sheila began the real business of the interview.  “You are not an artist, Dickie,” she said, “and you don’t understand why your father asked me to work at The Aura nor why I wanted to work there.  It was your entire inability to understand—­”

“Entire inability—­” whispered Dickie as though he were taking down the phrase with an intention of looking it up later.

This confused Sheila.  “Your—­your entire inability,” she repeated rapidly, “your—­your entire inability—­”

“Yes’m.  I’ve got that.”

“—­To understand that made me so angry that day.”  Sheila was glad to be rid of that obstruction.  She had planned this speech rather carefully in the watches of the wakeful, feverish morning which had been her night.  “You seemed to be trying to pull your father and me down to some lower spiritual level of your own.”

“Lower spiritual level,” repeated Dickie.

“Dickie, stop that, please!”

He looked up, startled by her sharpness.  “Stop what, ma’am?”

“Saying things after me.  It’s insufferable.”

“Insufferable—­oh, I suppose it is.  You’re usin’ so many words, Sheila.  I kind of forgot there was so many words as you’re makin’ use of this afternoon.”

“Oh, Dickie, Dickie!  Can’t you see how miserable I am!  I am so unhappy and—­and scared, and you—­you are making fun of me.”

At that, spoken in a changed and quavering key of helplessness, Dickie hurried to her, knelt down beside her chair, and took her hands.

“Sheila!  I’ll do anything!”

His presence, his boyish, quivering touch, so withheld from anything but boyishness, even the impulsive humility of his thin, kneeling body, were inexpressibly soothing, inexpressibly comforting.  She did not draw away her hands.  She let them cling to his.

“Dickie, will you answer me, quite truthfully and simply, without any explaining or softening, please, if I ask you a—­a dreadful question?”

“Yes, dear.”

“I’m not sure if it is a dreadful question, but—­but I’m afraid it is.”

“Don’t worry.  Ask me.  Surely, I’ll answer you the truth without any fixin’s.”

Her hands clung a little closer.  She was silent, gathering courage.  He felt her slim knees quiver.

“What do they mean, Dickie,” she whispered with a wan look, “when they call me—­’Hudson’s Queen’?”

Dickie bent from her look as though he felt a pain.  He took her hands up close to his breast.  “Who told you that they called you that?” he asked breathlessly.

“That’s what every one calls me—­the men over in the Big Horn country—­they tell men that are coming to Millings to be sure to look up ‘Hudson’s Queen.’  Do they mean the Hotel, Dickie?  They do mean the Hotel, don’t they, Dickie?—­that I am The Hudson’s Queen?”