The fatherliness of the salute--and he couldn't have made it anything else--would have shamed Kitty's peculiar state of mind out of existence and probably sent back to its eternal sleep that which was strangely reawaking in his lonely heart.
"Forgive me, Kitty.

That wasn't exactly nice of me, even if I was trying to be funny." She tore away from him, flung herself upon the divan, her face in the pillows, and let down the dam.
This wild sobbing--apparently without any reason terrified Cutty.

He put both hands into his hair, but he drew them out immediately without retaining any of the thinning gray locks.

Done up, both of them; that was the matter.

He longed to console her, but knew not what to say or how to act.