Clarice sat up and looked at her reproachfully, then she said, 'I know it's absurd.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry myself, b-b-but I usually cry.

And then in his books he's--he's always his own hero.' With that Clarice reached at once the climax of her distress and the supreme charge of her indictment.

The rest was but sighs and sobs and disconnected phrases.
Finally she fell asleep; later she was caressed into eating lunch, taken for a drive, and sent home subsequently greatly mollified and relieved.
Mrs.Willoughby refrained from tendering advice that afternoon.

There was nothing sufficiently tangible in the story which she had heard.