ung
creatures--had always signally failed to arouse. He had seen it in other
men, had seen their hearts wrung because an able-bodied girl must take a
trolley car instead of her father's carriage, but he had thought himself
hard, perhaps, unchivalrous; but now he knew better. Now he knew what it
was to feel personally outraged at a woman's discomfort.

"Good God!" he cried, "what a night you have had. How wicked, how
abominable, how criminal--"

[Illustration: "GOOD GOD," HE CRIED "WHAT A NIGHT YOU HAVE HAD"]

"It has been a dreadful night," said the girl, "but it is nobody's
fault."

"Of course it is somebody's fault," answered Geoffrey. "It must be. Do
you mean to tell me no one is to blame when I have been sitting all
night with my feet on the fender, and you--"

"Certainly," said she with an extraordinarily wide, sweet smile, "I
could wish we might have changed places."

"I wish to Heaven we might," returned Geoffrey, and meant it. Never
before had he yearned to bear the sufferings of another. He had often
seen that it was advisable, suitable just that he should, but burningly
to want to was a new experience.

"Thank you," said the girl, "but I'm afraid there is nothing to be
done."

"Nothing to be done!" He dropped on his knees before the black monster
of a stove, "Do you suppose I'm here to do nothing?"

"You are here, I think, for shelter from the storm."

It had not occurred to him before that she looked upon him as a chance
wanderer.

"That shows your ignorance of the situation. I am here to rescue you. I
left my fireside for no other reason. As I came along I said at every
blast, 'that poor, poor girl.' I set out to bring you to safety. I begin
to think I was born for no other reason."

She smiled rather wearily, "Your coming at all is so strange that I
could almost believe you."

"You may thoroughly believe me, more easily perhaps when I tell you I
did not particularly want to come. I started out at dawn very cross and
cold because I did not know what I was going to find...."

"But I thought you said you did know that you were going to rescue a
girl?"

"A girl, yes. But what's a mere girl? How many thousand girls have I
seen in my life? Is that a thought to turn a man's head? What I did not
know was that I was going to find _you_."

"The fire will never burn with the chimney strewn on the floor," she
said mildly.

"Well, I've said it, you see," he answered, "and you won't forget it,
eve