When she gave no sign, he spoke again.
“I'm a man and a stranger. You're a wife. But you've told me so much. You're wounded. You can't go on by yourself.”
She moved. He knew now that she was listening.
“There's that door in the wall we were going to find. Perhaps we've found it. Let me be your friend. It would be foolish and wrong for me to tell you that I——”
She raised her head. Her hair fell back, and her eyes gazed out at him with hungry intensity. “Don't say it,” she implored. “Varensky——”
“But if he's dead? If I can bring you sure proof?”
For answer she pressed his hand against her bosom.
VII
He seated himself at her feet, his arms clasped about his knees as if crouched before a camp-fire. How much meaning had she read into his implied confession? He felt happy; happier than ever before in his life, and yet, if she were the cause of his happiness, the odds were all against him. She had promised him nothing. She could promise him nothing. All he knew of her was what she had told him. His elation might prove to be no more than an emotion that would fade in the chill light of morning.
“It would be foolish and wrong for me to tell you——” The words had risen to his lips unpremeditated. He had not realized that he cared for her until they were uttered. He had merely felt an immense compassion, an overwhelming desire to comfort her. That he should care for her at all was preposterous. It was paying her no compliment. Love that was worth the having required a more permanent incentive than physical beauty. Her mind and her character were a riddle to him. If his passion was no passing mood and she were indeed a widow, it would be her mind and her character that he might one day marry. He ought to have foreseen that something of this sort would be sure to happen between a man and woman left alone after midnight.