At the sound of the name, Juliet burst into tears, the first she shed, for the word Paul, like the head of the javelin torn from the wound, brought the whole fountain after it.  She cast herself down again, and lay and wept.  Dorothy kneeled beside her, and laid a hand on her shoulder.  It was the only way she could reach her at all.

“You see,” she said at last, for the weeping went on and on, “there is nothing will do you any good but your husband.”

“No, no; he has cast me from him forever!” she cried, in a strange wail that rose to a shriek.

“The wretch!” exclaimed Dorothy, clenching a fist whose little bones looked fierce through the whitened skin.

“No,” returned Juliet, suddenly calmed, in a voice almost severe; “it is I who am the wretch, to give you a moment in which to blame him.  He has done nothing but what is right.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“I deserved it.”

“I am sure you did not.  I would believe a thousand things against him before I would believe one against you, my poor white queen!” cried Dorothy, kissing her hand.

She snatched it away, and covered her face with both hands.

“I should only need to tell you one thing to convince you,” she sobbed from behind them.

“Then tell it me, that I may not be unjust to him.”

“I can not.”

“I won’t take your word against yourself,” returned Dorothy determinedly.  “You will have to tell me, or leave me to think the worst of him.”  She was moved by no vulgar curiosity:  how is one to help without knowing?  “Tell me, my dear,” she went on after a little; “tell me all about it, and in the name of the God in whom I hope to believe, I promise to give myself to your service.”

Thus adjured, Juliet found herself compelled.  But with what heart-tearing groans and sobs, with what intervals of dumbness, in which the truth seemed unutterable for despair and shame, followed by what hurrying of wild confession, as if she would cast it from her, the sad tale found its way into Dorothy’s aching heart, I will not attempt to describe.  It is enough that at last it was told, and that it had entered at the wide-open, eternal doors of sympathy.  If Juliet had lost a husband, she had gained a friend, and that was something—­indeed no little thing—­for in her kind the friend was more complete than the husband.  She was truer, more entire—­in friendship nearly perfect.  When a final burst of tears had ended the story of loss and despair, a silence fell.

“Oh, those men! those men!” said Dorothy, in a low voice of bitterness, as if she knew them and their ways well, though never had kiss of man save her father lighted on her cheek. “—­My poor darling!” she said after another pause, “—­and he cast you from him!—­I suppose a woman’s heart,” she went on after a third pause, “can never make up for the loss of a man’s, but here is mine for you to go into the very middle of, and lie down there.”