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 rington, almost crying in his desperation. "I'm the only person here that didn't go against his own town. Billie, believe me, I'm the only person that hasn't gone against your father in this other matter. I'm truer to him than any of the others, just as I'm truest to you when you think"

It was her manner that interrupted him—the manner of utter incapacity to believe. "Perhaps when you see how much your madness is making us all suffer, you will decide to be sane again," she reproached bitterly, but with a tremulous note so prominent in her voice that at last it quavered almost pitifully as she concluded, "I wonder—oh, I wonder how much of this it will take to bring you to your senses?"

"You—you wonder?" Henry breathed in amazement, marveling in part that she could still be blindly partisan as the others, and in part that she did not see that he was suffering too. He was almost angry with her and backed away confounded, shaking his head like a man who struggles with the contradictions of a bad dream. Yet, after a moment, it was persistently, patiently a love-light in the distraught eyes which followed that haughty, tremulous slenderness into the dispersing crowd. "Isn't that hopeless—isn't that hopeless?" he murmured to himself. "She loves me and . . . isn't that hopeless?" He sank into a chair at the front of the emptying hall and meditated dismally. Billie! . . . She could have been of help to him. Instead she had added to his burden which was already fairly heavy. Well, dear girl! she had been very much put out with him. And—she couldn't understand—not yet. It was environment that blinded her, of course; but—well—something