bear, or perhaps of both. He decided that
whatever her trouble might be, it was no new or passing thing. Every
curve in her despondent figure, every line in her worn, lovely face,
suggested a vast weariness of flesh and spirit. He had not seen those
lines in the mirror, and he looked at them now with understanding and
solemn eyes, as he had looked at the new lines in his sister's face when
Barbara had been passing through the worst of her ordeal last year.

In this moment of realization he almost forgot the girl's beauty,
though, indeed, it was not easy to forget. It seemed enhanced rather
than dimmed by the haze of melancholy that hung over it, and certainly
there was nothing dim in the superb red-gold coloring of her hair. Her
eyes seemed red-gold, too, for they were reddish-brown with flecks of
yellow light in them, quite wonderful eyes. He told himself that he had
never seen any just like them. Certainly he had rarely seen anything to
equal the somber misery of their expression. There was a remoteness in
them which repelled sympathy, and which was intensified by the haughty
curve of the girl's short upper lip. She was proud, proud as the devil,
Laurie told himself. Again, and very humbly, he wondered how he was to
handle a situation and a personality so outside his own experience. In
truth, he was afraid. Though he did not know it, and perhaps would have
vigorously denied it, Laurie still looked at women through stained-glass
windows.

When the food came, her expression changed. She shot a quick look at
him, a glance at once furtive and suspicious, which he saw but ignored.
He had dismissed the waiter and was serving her himself. In the simple
boyish friendliness of his manner she evidently found reassurance, for
she suddenly sat up and began her breakfast.

Laurie exhaled the breath he had been holding. Up till the last moment
he had feared that she might see through his subterfuge in taking her
there, and even now refuse the food he offered. But if in that fleeting
instant she felt doubt, it had died as it was born. She drank her coffee
slowly and ate her eggs and toast as deliberately, but her
characteristic air of intense preoccupation had departed. She looked at
her companion as if she really saw him. Also, she apparently felt the
stirring of some sense of obligation and need of response to this
friendly stranger. She was answering him now, and once at least she
almost smiled.

Watching the little twitch of