“That is not so bad then,” and she settled a cushion.  “Because unhappiness is only a thing for a time.  You are crazy for the moon, and you can’t get it, and you grieve and curse for a little, and then a new moon arises.  What else?”

“Well, I want you to sympathize with me, and tell me what I had better do.  Shall I go back to England to-morrow morning, or stay for the dinner-party?”

“You got as far, then, as telling each other you loved each other madly—­and are both suffering from broken hearts, after one week’s acquaintance.”

“Don’t be so brutal!” pleaded Hector.

And she noticed that his face looked haggard and changed.  So her shrewd, kind eyes beamed upon him.

“Yes, I dare say it hurts; but having broken up your cake, you can’t go on eating it.  Why, in Heaven’s name, did you let affairs get to a climax?”

“Because I am mad,” said Hector, and he stretched out his arms.  “I cannot tell you how much I love her.  Haven’t you seen for yourself what a darling she is?  Every dear word she speaks shows her beautiful soul, and it all creeps right into my heart.  I worship her as I might an angel, but I want her in my arms.”

Mrs. McBride knew the English.  They were not emotional or poseurs like some other nations, and Hector Bracondale was essentially a man of the world, and rather a whimsical cynic as well.  So to see him thus moved must mean great things.  She was guilty, too, for helping to create the situation.  She must do what she could for him, she felt.

“You should pull yourself together, mon cher Bracondale,” she said; “it is not like you to be limp and undecided.  You had better stay for the party, and make yourself behave like a gentleman, and how you mean to continue.  We have passed the days when ‘Oh no, we never mention him’ is the order, and ‘never meeting,’ and that sort of thing.  You are bound to meet unless you go into the wilds.  And you must face it and try to forget her.”

“I can never forget her,” he said, in a deep voice; “but, as you say, I must face it and do my best.”

“You see,” continued the widow, “the girl has only been married a year, and her husband is the most unattractive human being you could find along a sidewalk of miles; but he is her husband, anyway, and she may have children.”

Hector clinched his hands in a convulsive movement of anguish and rage.

“And you must realize all these possibilities, and settle a path for yourself and stick to it.”

“Oh, I couldn’t bear that!” he said.  “It would be better I should take her away myself now, to-day.”

“You will do no such thing!” said the widow, sternly, and she sat up again.  “You forget I am going to marry her father, and I shall look upon her as my daughter and protect her from wolves—­do you hear?  And what is more, she is too good and true to go with you.  She has a backbone if you haven’t; and she’ll see it her duty to stick to that lump of middle-class meat she is bound to—­and she’ll do her best, if she suffers to heart-break.  It is she, the poor, little white dove, that you and I have wounded between us, that I pity, not you—­great, strong man!”