"You poor boy," she said, with genuine feeling in her tone, "is it so real as that? I wouldn't have hurt you for the world, if I had known. What business had you to be meddling with vows and renunciation until you knew what they meant?"
She moved back to her seat as she spoke, motioning Ashe to resume his place. He was too deeply moved to obey her.
"If you will excuse me," he said, "I will see you to-morrow in regard to those delegates. I--I am not quite myself."
"But you shall not go without saying that you forgive me for my teasing. Really, I am sorry and ashamed. I never intend to hurt you, but I see that my teasing may be taken more seriously than it is meant."
There was real gentleness and pity in her smile, and as she rose to stand looking into his face with a winning smile of apology he forgot all his bitterness.
"The trouble is with me," he said. "I do not understand the world, and I should keep out of it."
"Oh, not at all," she retorted briskly. "You should learn how to live in it."
A spark of mischief kindled in her glance as she spoke, and she extended to him the back of her hand. Her smile challenged him, and he had been won and moved by the sympathy of her voice. The hand, too, was so beautiful, so slender, so feminine; he had so keen a longing to be comforted, to be soothed by womanly softness, and to assuage his loneliness by woman's sympathy, that it seemed impossible to resist the invitation of those delicate fingers. He took her hand, and raised it half way to his lips. Then he dropped it abruptly, letting his own arm swing lifelessly to his side.
A SYMPATHY OF WOE Titus Andronicus, iii. 1.
The first sensation which returning consciousness brought to Berenice Morison, after the shock of the collision and the feeling that the whole train had been hurled confusedly into space, was that of coming into fresher air as if she were emerging from the depths of the sea. Opening her eyes without comprehending where she was or what had happened, she found herself on the side of an overturned car. Around her were dreadful noises, yells, groans, cries, shouts; her nostrils were filled with the reek of burning stuffs; the light of lanterns and of torches blinded her eyes; a sense of horror oppressed her; appalling calamity which she could not understand seemed to have overtaken her; and she shuddered with terror unspeakable. Her first impulse was to shriek and to attempt to flee from the fearful things which surrounded her; but instantly the self-control of returning reason made itself felt.