"That poor child," he said, under his breath.
She looked at him piteously.
"Did you ever realize what you were doing?" he asked her, raising her hand to his lips.
"No, no! How could I? I thought of some one so different--I had never seen her--"
She paused, her wide--seeking gaze fixed upon him through tears, as though she pleaded with him to find explanations--palliatives.
But he gently shook his head.
Suddenly, shaken with weeping, she bowed her face upon the hands that held her own. It was like one who relinquishes all pleading, all defence, and throws herself on the mercy of the judge.
He tenderly asked her pardon if he had wounded her. But he shrank from offering any caress. The outward signs of life's most poignant and most beautiful moments are generally very simple and austere.