The truth sometimes presents itself like a withering flame.  Dickie got up, put away her hands, walked up and down, then came back to her.  He had heard the epithet and he knew its meaning.  He wrestled now with his longing to keep her from such understanding, or, at least, to soften it.  She had asked for the clear truth and he had promised it to her.  He stood away because he could not trust himself to endure the wincing of her hands and body when she heard the truth.  He hoped dimly that she might not understand it.

“They don’t mean the Hotel, Sheila,” he said harshly.  “They mean—­Father.  You know now what they mean—?” In her stricken and bewildered eyes he saw that she did know.  “I would like to kill them,” sobbed Dickie suddenly.  “I would like to kill—­him.  No, no, Sheila, don’t you cry.  Don’t you.  It’s not worth cryin’ for.  It’s jest ignorant folks’s ignorant and stupid talk.  It’s not worth cryin’ for.”  He sat down on the arm of her chair and fairly gathered her into his arms.  He rocked and patted her shoulder and kissed her gently on her hair—­all with that boyishness, that brotherliness, that vast restraint so that she could not even guess the strange and unimaginable pangs he suffered from his self-control.

Before Dickie’s resolution was burnt away by the young inner fire, Sheila withdrew herself gently from his arms and got up from the chair.  She walked over to one of the two large windows—­the sunset windows she called them, in contradistinction to the one sunrise window—­and stood composing herself, her hands twisted together and lifted to the top of the lower sash, her forehead rested on them.

A rattle of china, a creaking step outside the door, interrupted their tremulous silence in which who knows what mysterious currents were passing between their young minds.

“It’s my dinner,” said Sheila, and Dickie walked over mechanically and opened the door.

Amelia Plecks came panting into the room, set the tray down on a small table, and looked contempt at Dickie.

“There now, Miss Arundel,” she said with breathless tenderness, “I’ve pro-cured a dandy chop for you.  You said you was kind of famished for a lamb chop, and, of course, in a sheep country good mutton’s real hard to come by, and this ain’t properly speaking—­lamb, but—!  Well, say, it’s just dandy meat.”

She ignored Dickie as one might ignore the presence of some obnoxious insect in the reception-room of a queen.  Her eyes were disgustedly fascinated by his presence, but in her conversation she would not admit this preoccupation of disgust.

“I’ll be going,” said Dickie.

Amelia nodded as one who applauds the becoming move of an inferior.

“Here’s a note for you, Miss Arundel,” she said, coming over to Sheila’s post at the window, where she was trying to hide the traces of her tears.  “Well, say, who’s been botherin’ you?” Amelia’s voice went down a long, threatening octave to a sinister bass note, at the voicing of which she turned to look at Dickie.