"Yes. I--You're so funny, Elizabeth. It's hard to talk to you.
But I've got to talk to somebody. I go around by Station Street
every chance I get."

"By Station Street? Why?"

"I should think you could guess why."

She saw that Clare desired to be questioned, and at the same time
she felt a great distaste for the threatened confidence. She
loathed arm-in-arm confidences, the indecency of dragging up and
exposing, in whispers, things that should have been buried deep
in reticence. She hesitated, and Clare slipped an arm through hers.

"You don't know, then, do you? Sometimes I think every one must
know. And I don't care. I've reached that point."

Her confession, naive and shameless, and yet somehow not without a
certain dignity, flowed on. She was mad about Doctor Dick
Livingstone. Goodness knew why, for he never looked at her. She
might be the dirt under his feet for all he knew. She trembled
when she met him in the street, and sometimes he looked past her
and never saw her. She didn't sleep well any more.

Elizabeth listened in great discomfort. She did not see in Clare's
hopeless passion the joy of the flagellant, or the self-dramatization
of a neurotic girl. She saw herself unwillingly forced to peer into
the sentimental windows of Clare's soul, and there to see Doctor
Dick Livingstone, an unconscious occupant. But she had a certain
fugitive sense of guilt, also. Formless as her dreams had been,