"Oh, Helen," Edith sobbed. "Life is too hard! Life is too hard!"
Still Helen did not answer, save by the caress of her fingers. The
tears were in her own eyes. One woman instinctively appreciates the
tragedy of another's life, and her unspoken sympathy was balm to
Edith's soul.
"Come," she said, patting Edith's shoulder as one might soothe a
weeping child, "you're all tired out. I can't take the responsibility
of letting you have hysterics; Arthur would never leave you alone with
me again."
She spoke with as much lightness of tone as she could command, while
her embrace and her caresses conveyed the sympathy she would not put
into words.
Presently Mrs. Fenton disengaged herself from her companion's arms and
sat up, wiping away her tears.
"I must be tired," she said, "or I shouldn't be so foolish."
"You do too much," Helen returned. Then, with the design of giving her
friend a chance to retreat from their dangerous nearness to
confidences, she added,--
"Now tell me what you've done to-day."
"I have done a good deal," the other replied, smiling faintly and
showing the recovery of her self-possession by sundry little touches to
the crushed roses in her gown. "At nine o'clock I went to the Saturday
Morning Club, to hear Mr. Jefferson's paper on 'The Over-Soul in
Buddhism'; then, at eleven, I went to Mrs. Gore's to see an example of
the way they teach deaf and dumb children to read lip language; then
Arthur and I went to luncheon at Christopher Plant's, and at half past
three was the meeting of the committee on the Knitting School; then
there was the reception at Uncle Peter's, and the tea at Mrs.
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