Amid the turmoil of the gate-keeper's voice who was recounting the affair to the latest arrivals Hermia watched the train as it passed between the fragments of what a few minutes before had been a new French machine. Some of the peasants had already gathered around the wreck and one of them restored her leather bag, which had been tossed some distance into the ditch. To all appearances this was the only salvage and she took it gratefully. A walk down the track convinced Markham that what was left of the car was only fit for the scrap-heap. And as the crowd still surrounded Hermia he put his arm in hers and led her away. She followed him silently up the road by which she had come until they had left the gaping crowd behind them. Then he made her sit on a bank by the roadside and unslinging his knapsack dropped beside her. "Well?" he asked.
She looked down the road toward the scene of her misfortune, the smile, half plaintive, half whimsical, that had been hovering on her lips suddenly breaking.
"If you scold me I shall cry."
"I'm not going to scold," he said kindly. "That wouldn't help matters."
"It was such a beautiful piece of mechanism—so human—so intelligent—" a tear trembled on her lashes and fell—"and I've only had it two days."
She was the child with a broken toy. It was the child he wanted to comfort.
"I'm sorry," he said genuinely. "I wish I could put it together for you again."
"It's gone—irretrievably. There's nothing to be done, of course." And then, "Oh! it seems so cruel! The thing cried out like a wounded animal. You heard it, didn't you? And it was all my fault. That's what hurts me so."
"One gets over being hurt, but one doesn't get over being dead. You only missed being killed by the part of a second."
She dashed the tears form her eyes with the back of her hand.