Hilda flushed and twisted her hands. Now that it was out, she felt a sense of nakedness, of being stripped bare and forced to walk through crowded streets, as she had often dreamed—a dream that always awoke her with fright. Even to her mother, close as she was to her, and to Mimi she had never dared reveal the extent of her love for Carl. A natural shyness and a fear of being made or thought ridiculous had forced her to keep her real feeling to herself. Now that Mimi had put it into words, she wished fervently she had kept to her former secretiveness. Not knowing the extent to which Carl’s and Mimi’s friendship had developed, she felt she had laid herself open to ridicule. Her perturbation was answer enough for Mimi.
“But why have you acted as you have?” she pursued the inquiry. “You of all people ought to know there’s nothing between Carl and me—”
Hilda silenced