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Rh turn, could only quicken her pity, and all her emotions, we have already seen, found prompt enough expression. What could any expression do indeed now but mark the romantic reality? "Why, you poor thing!"—she came toward him on the weary road. "Now that you've got here I hope at least you'll stay." Their intercourse must pitch itself—so far as she was concerned—in some key that would make up for things. "Do make yourself comfortable. Don't mind me."

Yule looked a shade less serious. "That's exactly what I wanted to say to you!"

She was struck with the way it came in. "Well, if you had been haughty, I shouldn't have been quite crushed, should I?"

The young man's gravity, at this, completely yielded. "I'm never haughty—oh, no!"

She seemed even more amused. "Fortunately then, as I'm never crushed. I don't think," she added, "that I'm really as crushable as you."

The smile with which he received this failed to conceal completely that it was something of a home thrust. "Aren't we really all crushable—by the right thing?"

She considered a little. "Don't you mean rather by the wrong?"