He stopped dead. The woman moved nearer and for the first time he saw her face clearly. Its ghastly pallor, the bright, frightened eyes that stared with a kind of dazed bewilderment into his own, the beauty above all, arrested his speech midway. The woman was young, her tall figure wrapped in a dark fur coat.
“Can I help you?” he asked impulsively, forgetting his own terror for the moment. He was more than startled. Her air of distress and pain stirred a peculiar anguish in him. For a moment she made no answer, thrusting her white face closer as if examining him, so close, indeed, that he controlled with difficulty his instinct to shrink back a little.
“Where am I?” she asked at length, searching his eyes intently. “I’m lost—I’ve lost myself. I can’t find my way back.” Her voice was low, a curious wailing in it that touched his pity oddly. He felt his own distress merging in one that was greater.
“Same here,” he replied more confidently. “I’m terrified of being alone, too. I’ve had shell-shock, you know. Let’s go together. We’ll find a way together——”
“Who are you!” the woman murmured, still staring at him with her big bright eyes, their distress, however, no whit lessened. She gazed at him as though aware suddenly of his presence.
He told her briefly. “And I’m going to tea with a V.A.D. friend in Morley Place. What’s your address? Do you know the name of the street?”
She appeared not to hear him, or not to understand exactly; it was as if she was not listening again.
“I came out so suddenly, so unexpectedly,” he heard the low voice with pain in every syllable; “I can’t find my home again. Just when I was expecting him too——” She looked about her with a distraught expression that made O’Reilly long to carry her in his arms to safety then and there. “He may be there now—waiting for me at this very moment—and I can’t get back.” And so sad was her voice that only by an effort did O’Reilly prevent himself putting out his hand to touch her. More and more he forgot himself in his desire to help her. Her beauty, the wonder of her strange bright eyes in the pallid face, made an immense appeal. He became calmer. This woman was real enough. He asked again the address, the street and number, the distance she thought it was. “Have you any idea of the direction, ma’am, any idea at all? We’ll go together and——”
She suddenly cut him short. She turned her head as if to listen, so that he saw her profile a moment, the outline of the slender neck, a glimpse of jewels just below the fur.
“Hark! I hear him calling! I remember...!” And she was gone from his side into the swirling fog.