“Ruth Foote,” said Hilda, “what’s the matter?...  Where’s Bonbright?...  I’m coming in.”

She opened the door, saw Ruth outstretched on the bed, face buried in her pillow, sobbing with a queer, startling dryness.  It was not the sob of a woman in an attack of nerves, not the sob of a woman merely crying to rest herself, nor the sob of a bride who has had a petty quarrel with her husband.  It was different, alarmingly different.  There was despair in it.  It told of something seriously awry, of stark tragedy.

Hilda’s years were not many, but her intuition was sure.  She did not demand explanations, did not command Ruth to stop crying and tell what ailed her, but sat down quietly on the bed and stroked the sobbing girl’s hair, crooning over her softly.  “There!...  There!...”

Gradually the tenseness, the dry, racking, tearing quality of Ruth’s sobs, softened, ameliorated.  Presently she was crying, quietly, pitifully. ...  Hilda breathed with relief.  She did not know that for an hour Ruth had sat on the edge of her bed, still, tearless, staring blindly before her—­her soul drying up and burning within her for lack of tears.  She had been unable to cry.  She had uttered no sound until Hilda’s voice came in to her.  Then she had thrown herself prone in that paroxysm of wrenching sobs. ...

“There!...  There!...”  Hilda crooned.

Ruth’s hand crept out fumblingly, found Hilda’s dress, and clutched it.  Hilda laid her warm hand over Ruth’s cold fingers—­and waited.

“He’s—­gone,” Ruth sobbed, presently.

“Never mind, honey. ...  Never mind, now.”

Ruth mumbled incoherently.  After a time she raised herself on her arms and crouched beside Hilda, who put her arms around her and held her close, as she would have held a troubled child.

“You’ll—­despise me,” Ruth whispered.

“I guess not.”  Hilda pressed Ruth’s slenderness against her more robust body reassuringly.  “I don’t despise folks, as a rule. ...  Want to talk now?”

She saw that the time for speech had come.

“He won’t-come back. ...  I saw it in his eyes.”

“Who won’t come back, dear?”

“Bonbright.”  Ruth drew a shuddering breath.  Then haltingly, whimperingly, sobs interrupting, she talked.  She could not tell it fast enough.  It must be told, her mind must be relieved, and the story, pent up so long within her, rushed forth in a flood of despairing, self-accusing words.  It came in snatches, fragments, as high lights of suffering flashed upon her mind.  She did not start at the beginning logically and carry through—­but the thing as a whole was there.  Hilda had only to sort it and reassemble it to get the pitiful tale complete.

“You—­you don’t mean you married Bonbright like some of those Russian nihilist persons one hears about—­just to use him and your position—­ for some socialist or anarchist thing?  You’re not serious, Ruth?...  Such things aren’t.”