You may have to eat humble pie. But it will do you good, and the game is worth it."
Upstairs Hildegarde was flying from the closet to the bed, from the bed to her trunk, with armfuls of dresses and hats and lingerie. She was packing violently, the tears streaming down her face.
She was acting as she had never acted in her life, impulsively, heatedly. But then no one had ever hurt her in quite the way that her father's words had hurt. She felt that she must get away at once, before she thought of how happy she had been that morning when Delia was singing in the bathroom; before she thought of her mood when she had said "darling," and "darling," and "darling." Would she ever again call her father "darling"? Would her heart ever stop aching?
She threw herself across the bed sobbing. She had locked the door. No one must come in, not even Delia, until this storm within herself subsided.
There was a knock on the door. "Hildegarde."
It was her father's voice. She sat up. "Yes?"
"Let me in."
She looked about her at the wild confusion. The mirror showed her tear-stained face, her disordered hair. How could she let him in? Yet how could she shut him out? So she opened the door.
And when he saw her, something within him broke—the hardness. Downstairs, with Meriweather, he had thought himself a diplomat, gaining his own ends while seeming to yield. But he knew now that he must yield even if he did not gain his end. The child was
