At last she lifted her head, looking up between drenched lashes.
“Please go away,” she said in childish entreaty.
“How can I?” he returned. “It’s impossible that I should leave you in this state. Trust me—let me help you. Tell me what has gone wrong, and let’s see if there’s no other way out of it.”
Woburn had a voice full of sensitive inflections, and it was now trembling with profoundest pity. Its note seemed to reassure the girl, for she said, with a beginning of confidence in her own tones, “But I don’t even know who you are.”
Woburn was silent: the words startled him. He moved nearer to her and went on in the same quieting tone.
“I am a man who has suffered enough to want to help others. I don’t want to know any more about you than will enable me to do what I can for you. I’ve probably seen more of life than you have, and if you’re willing to tell me your troubles perhaps together we may find a way out of them.”
She dried her eyes and glanced at the revolver.
“That’s the only way out,” she said.
“How do you know? Are you sure you’ve tried every other?”
“Perfectly sure, I’ve written and written, and humbled myself like a slave before him, and she won’t even let him answer my letters. Oh, but you don’t understand”—she broke off with a renewal of weeping.