The realization that hearts near hers were beating with hope or dread, or sinking with disappointment, was so keen
that the heavy air of the place became charged for Win with the electricity of emotion. She felt what all felt in a strange confusion; and when a stricken face went by, it was she, Winifred Child, who was stricken. What happened to others suddenly mattered just as much and in exactly the same degree as what might happen to her. The weight of sadness and weariness pressed upon her. The smell of unaired clothes and stale, cheap perfumes made her head ache.
"Tired, girlie?" inquired the big young man on whose broad back Win had involuntarily reposed on the way upstairs She was startled at this manner of address, but the brotherly benevolence on the square face under a thick brushwood of blond hair reassured her. Evidently "girlie" was the right word in the right place.
"Not so very. Are you?" She felt that conversation would be a relief. It was intensely cold yet stuffy in the corridor, and time seemed endless.
"Me? Huh! Bet yer my place yer can't guess what my job was up to a month ago."
He turned a strongly cut profile far over his shoulder, his head pivoting on a great column of throat above a low, loose collar that had a celluloid gleam where the light touched it. Only one eye and the transparent gleam of another cornea were given to Winifred's view, but that one green-gray orb was as compelling as a dozen ordinary seeing apparatuses.
"If I guessed what's in my mind, I'm afraid it would be silly," said Win. "You look as if you might be a—a boxer—or––"
"Or what?"
"
Or as if you could train things—animals, I mean––"