Marion handed the two anonymous letters to her friend without introductory remark, and the latter read them. As Marion watched the expression on the reader's face, she was forced to admit to herself that right then, under those seemingly impersonal circumstances, Helen's habitual strangeness of manner was more pronounced than she had ever before known it to be. This girl of impenetrable secrecy read the letters, seemingly with an abstraction amounting almost to inattention, while physically she appeared to shrink from something that to her alone was visible and real.