hand is hot. Of course we will stay as long as you want to.—All that nonsense is over,' said Dick, with a strange, hard note in his voice.
'May we really? Really, Dick?—I'm upset, that is the truth of it.—No; I'm not ill; I may have caught a little cold, but I'm not ill. But I've been through a lot. And I'm awfully afraid I shall go on crying when I tell you about Marthe and her mother.—We are friends, now, Dick. She has told me everything. She cares for me as much, I think, as I care for her. And she's never had a friend before.'
'But not now. Don't tell me anything now. Let me put you to bed first, and have a good night's rest. Let's forget all about Mademoiselle Ludérac until to-morrow morning.'
But Jill could not bear that. She knew that she could not sleep until she had told Dick. And she drew herself up a little, though she still leaned on his shoulder, and dried her eyes to show him that she was calm, and then it all came; incoherently enough, yet clearly, too, to Graham sitting there, holding her; clearly, sharply, even dryly, so it seemed to him, in his great fatigue; like a series of etchings that Jill placed before him: Marthe Ludérac watching her father and his mistress; Marthe Ludérac coming into the room where her father lay dead; Marthe Ludérac holding her distraught mother through the nights and singing old songs to her so that she should sleep. It was with a remote sense of pain that he listened; detached and dispassionate he felt himself to be. It was, so he told
