“Mother has married a man I hate.” Laurel took up the interrupted motif again. “She’s married a man she knew I hated. She has chosen him instead of me. She has married Ed Munn. He’s awful. He’s horrible. An animal is clean beside him. And she likes him. My mother! She’s fond of him. She’s been waiting for years to marry him.”

“Oh, no, Laurel.”

“Yes, she has. I know. Read that. Read that.”

She drew her mother’s letter from the front of her dress, and passed it to Helen.

“Do you want me to?”

Laurel nodded.

Helen sat down on the foot of the bed and opened the folded sheets. The letter had been written by Stella in pencil, carelessly, in haste apparently. It was read by Helen slowly, painstakingly, as if it had been written in blood. She read it twice. Afterward she looked up at Laurel.

Laurel gave a little shrug. “You see.”

“Yes, I think I see,” said Helen slowly.

“I thought it was for me she gave father the divorce, so I could come and be with you. And it made me glad. It made me proud. But I was mistaken. It was for him. It was to marry him, that creature. He’s her kind, down underneath. She is his kind. She chose him. Father’s right. The others are right. I’m the one who’s been wrong about her all this time. Oh, Mrs. Morrison, she’s killed my respect for her, and she knew she would—we have been quarreling about that man for weeks—she knew she would! But she didn’t care. She didn’t care.” Thus pitilessly Laurel sunk her sharp young teeth into the hand that hurt.

Helen murmured, “Greater love hath no woman than this.”

Laurel didn’t hear her. “I’m very unhappy, Mrs. Morrison,” she stated dully.

Helen replied, “You are very tired. You need sleep. Does it fasten behind?”

Very tenderly, as if she were handling a precious body from which life had departed, Helen unfastened Laurel’s dress. She slipped it off her shoulders. It fell to the floor. Bare-armed, bare-shouldered, a shiver ran through Laurel—like a breeze ripping a docile sail. Helen put both arms around her shelteringly.

“Oh, Mrs. Morrison! Mrs. Morrison!” Laurel cried out at the touch, and suddenly the storm broke, the long withheld flood burst, the boat tossed, the sail strained and pulled. But Helen’s hand was firm and steady on the tiller. She held Laurel close.

“That’s right. Cry. You’ll feel better. Cry. Cry.”

Later in the morning, she would show Laurel the rainbow.

6