quite bright until a moment ago, but suddenly I am all weak and trembling. The truth is, Mr. Stanton, I wasn't fit to be out this morning, especially alone, and I didn't come simply from sheer bravado, as you might think, and for the sake of doing what I'd been told not to do. I–I felt as though I must be out in the air, and in motion. I didn't sleep last night, and I didn't eat any breakfast this morning, which may partly account for this silliness of mine, perhaps. I thought I should feel better out of doors, but it seems that nothing in the world can do me any good. Everything I attempt must always end in disaster, and–oh, Mr. Stanton, I am so very, very unhappy and miserable!"

66

To my amazement and distress, she covered her face with her little gloved hands, and broke into a storm of sobbing.

67CHAPTER VIIFriends

67

Friends

It was all I could do to resist the impulse to take the small trembling hands in my own, to touch the bowed head with its glory of shimmering ripples, to break into passionate words which must have alarmed her, and put an end to my chance of winning her, perhaps for ever.

But to a certain extent I was able to control myself.

"What can I say–what can I do?" I stammered. "If there was only some way in which it might be possible for me to help you."

"Ah, if–if!" she echoed, desolately. "Don't you think it strange that, though we scarcely know each other–though this is only our second meeting, and quite by chance, I turn to you with such a confession? I am ashamed now"–and she impetuously dashed 68 her tears away with a toy of a handkerchief. "But the words spoke themselves before I could stop them. You see, I have no one to talk to–no one to advise me. I think I must be the loneliest girl in all this big preoccupied world."

68

"I should have thought you would have more friends than you could keep within bounds," I said, hotly.

"Friends? Has anyone many friends? I have plenty of acquaintances, 

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