At first her gaze was unseeing, then slowly she took in his anxious face. "Where—am—I?" she murmured brokenly.
"You are safe, and with friends!" he replied. "I stumbled over you in the road, you had fallen, somehow, in that dreadful thunder-storm."
Her eyes met his, and for one long instant she seemed to be searching his face. Then a weak, little smile trembled about her mouth, as she said:
"We met last night—I remember I thought how true your face was—I can trust you, I know."
A sigh, more of content than aught else, escaped her, and he felt how she let herself rest more fully in his supporting arm. He gave her another sip of the cordial, and she thanked him as some sweet child might have done.
For a moment she lay silent and still, then she spoke again, in a vague, speculative way, as though she was searching her mind for the clue:
"Ah, yes, I remember now. The great darkness came on, after those good men of God had spoken. And the crowd got frightened and ran hither and thither,—to find their homes, I suppose—and in the darkness some rushed against me, knocked me down, and—and—"
She shuddered, as she added, "I believe some others kicked me and trampled upon me, and—"
"Are you hurt?" he cried anxiously. "Do you feel as if any bone was broken, anywhere?"
She smiled back into his anxious face: "Hurt? not much! Certainly no bones are broken. But I feel bruised and sore, and—so—"