She sighed. “You are so strange, Pete. Will you let me kiss you now--since you are going to be my big little brother?”
She laughed and crooked her arm about his neck, forcing his face down to hers. His lips were hard and cool.
The face that Sylvie imagined a boy’s face, shy and blushing, half frightened, half cross, perhaps a trifle pleased, was so white and patient a face in its misery that her blind tenderness seemed almost like an intentional cruelty. It was an intensity of feeling almost palpable, but Sylvie’s mouth remained unburnt, though it removed itself with a pathetic little twist of disappointment.
“You don’t need to say anything,” she said, “You’ve shown me how you feel. You can’t like me. You are sorry I came. And I want so dreadfully for some one just now to talk to--to help me, to understand. It’s all dark and wonderful and frightening. I wish I had a brother--”
She bent her face to her knees and began to cry simply and passionately. At that Pete found it easy to forget himself. He put his arm very carefully about her, laying one of his hands on her bent head and stroking her hair.
“You have a brother,” he said. “Right here.”
The dark small silken head shook. “No. You don’t like me.”
“I do--I do. Please tell me everything you feel like telling; I’d like awfully to help you, to understand, to listen to you. You see, you’ve been so much with Hugh, I haven’t had a chance to know you as he does. And I guess--well--maybe I’m sort of shy.”
She lifted her head at that, took his stroking hand and held it in both of hers under her chin, as a little girl holds her pet kitten for the pleasure of its warmth. “You must get over being shy with me, Pete. We both love Hugh; we both admire him so. I’d so love to talk to you about him--”
“I’ve never seen him,” she sighed, “and you can see him all day long, Pete; will you try your best now to describe Hugh to me--every bit of him? Tell me the color of his eyes and the shape of his face and--everything. Tell me all you remember about him always.”
“I--I’m no good at that, Sylvie. A fellow you see all day long--why, you don’t know what he looks like, ‘specially if he’s your own brother.”
“Well, you certainly know the color of his eyes.”