George Cannon stooped and picked up his little bag. There he towered, high and massive, above her! And she felt acutely her slightness, her girlishness, and her need of his help. She could not afford to transform sympathy into antipathy. She was alone in the world. Never before had she realized, as she realized then, the lurking terror of her loneliness. The moment was critical. In another moment he might be gone from the room, and she left solitary to irremediable humiliation and self-disgust.
"Please!" she whispered appealingly. The whole of her being became an appeal--the glance, the gesture, the curve of the slim and fragile body. She was like a slave. She had no pride, no secret reserve of thought. She was an instinct. Tears showed in her eyes and affected her voice.
He gave the twisted, difficult, rather foolish smile of one who is cursing the mortification of a predicament into which he has been cast through no fault of his own.
"Please what?"
"Please sit down."
He waved a hand, deprecatingly, and obeyed.
"It's all right," he said. "All right! I ought to have known--" Then he smiled generously.
"Known what?" Her voice was now weak and liquid with woe.
"You'd be likely to be upset."
Not furtively, but openly, she wiped her eyes.