If I could take a word from _you_, I know she would come back to the table.
Shall I tell her you feel to blame ?" The answer was a long time coming; at last the man nodded an assent, the sweat pouring from his purple face.

She had set him thinking; her victory was sure.
Lily almost ran out into the garden and to the strawberry patch, where she found Lucretia in her familiar, colorless, shapeless dress, picking berries in the hot sun, the mosquitoes biting her neck and hands.
"Poor, pathetic, dumb sufferer!" the girl thought as she ran up to her.
She dropped her dish as she heard Lily coming, and gazed up into the tender, pitying face.

Not a word was spoken, but something she saw there made her eyes fill with tears, and her throat swell.

It was pure sympathy.

She put her arms around the girl's neck and sobbed for the first time since Friday night.