I put my arms round her as if she had been a child; I held her soft,
warm, quivering body close to mine; I wiped her tears away with her
pocket-handkerchief. And like a child she abandoned herself to my--to my
rectitude. She trusted in it utterly. I might have been her brother
Reggie.

I said: "You mustn't mind. He was only rotting us." And she said: "He
wasn't. It was true. He told me that six months ago he was starving."

I said: "Vee-Vee, if he _was_, you mustn't think about him. You mustn't,
really."

Then she drew away from me and dried her eyes herself, carefully and
efficiently, and said in a calm and measured voice: "I'm not thinking
about him."

I went on as if I hadn't heard her: "You mustn't be sorry for him. Jevons
is quite clever enough to take care of himself. He isn't a bit pathetic.
You mustn't let him get at you that way."

She raised her head with her old, high defiance. "He isn't trying to get
at me. I'm not sorry for him--any more than he's sorry for himself."

I said, "You don't know. You're just a dear little ostrich hiding its
head in the sand."

"No," she said. "No. I'm not a fool, Furny. Even an ostrich isn't such a
fool as it looks. It doesn't imagine for a moment that it isn't seen. It
hides its head because it knows it's going to be caught, anyway, and it's
afraid of seeing what's going to catch it."