Her newly developed womanhood suffered as womanhood alone can suffer.
And yet, could she have drawn the veil once more before her eyes and so have deadened that agonising pain, she would not have done so.
She was awake now.

The long, long sleep with its gay dreams, its careless illusions, was over.

But it was better to be awake, better to see and know things as they were, even if the anguish thereof killed her.

And so she refused the hushing comfort that only a child--such a child as she had been but yesterday--could have found satisfying.
"Yes, I can tell you--now--why he went," she said, in that tense whisper which so wrung Mrs.Raleigh's heart.

"He went--for my sake! Think of it! Think of it! He went because I was fretting about Phil.