"It's you!" murmured Miss Mackall. "I had lost myself!"
Sam endeavoured to sidle around the gate. She laid a restraining hand upon it.
"Wait a minute," she said. "I want to speak to you. Oh, it's nothing at all, but I was sorry I had no chance the other day. It seemed to me as I looked at you standing there alone, that you needed a friend!"
"A friend!"—the word released a spring in Sam's overwrought breast. For the first time he looked full at her with warm eyes. God knew he needed a friend if ever a young man did.
Miss Mackall, observing the effect of her word, repeated it. "Such a humiliating position for a manly man to be placed in!" she went on.
Sam's heart expanded with gratitude. "That was kind of you," he murmured.
It did not occur to him that her position against the gatepost was carefully studied; that the smile was cloying, and that behind the inviting friendliness of her eyes lay the anxiety of a woman growing old. It was enough that she offered him kindness. Both the gift and the giver seemed beautiful.
"There is a bond between us!" she went on, half coquettish, half serious. "I felt it from the first moment I saw you. Arriving together as we did, in a strange and savage country. Ugh!"—a delicate shudder here. "You and I are not like these people. We must be friends!"
A humiliated and sore-hearted youth will swallow more than this. Sam lingered by the gate. At the same time, somewhere within, was a dim consciousness that it was not very nutritious food.
But it went to the right spot. It renewed his faith in himself a little. It gave him courage to face the night that he knew awaited him in the dormitory.