himself, in a low voice:

"Oh, my God! for Christ's sake, pity her!"

Ruth lifted up her eyes, and looked at him with a dim perception of
the meaning of his words. She regarded him fixedly in a dreamy way,
as if they struck some chord in her heart, and she were listening to
its echo; and so it was. His pitiful look, or his words, reminded her
of the childish days when she knelt at her mother's knee, and she was
only conscious of a straining, longing desire to recall it all.

He let her take her time, partly because he was powerfully affected
himself by all the circumstances, and by the sad pale face upturned
to his; and partly by an instinctive consciousness that the softest
patience was required. But suddenly she startled him, as she herself
was startled into a keen sense of the suffering agony of the present;
she sprang up and pushed him aside, and went rapidly towards the gate
of the field. He could not move as quickly as most men, but he put
forth his utmost speed. He followed across the road, on to the rocky
common; but as he went along, with his uncertain gait, in the dusk
gloaming, he stumbled, and fell over some sharp projecting stone. The
acute pain which shot up his back forced a short cry from him; and,
when bird and beast are hushed into rest and the stillness of the
night is over all, a high-pitched sound, like the voice of pain,
is carried far in the quiet air. Ruth, speeding on in her despair,
heard the sharp utterance, and stopped suddenly short. It did what
no remonstrance could have done; it called her out of herself. The
tender nature was in her still, in that hour when all good angels
seemed to have abandoned her. In the old days she could never bear
to hear or see bodily suffering in any of God's meanest creatures,
without trying to succour them; and now, in her rush to the awful
death of the suicide, she stayed her wild steps, and turned to find
from whom that sharp sound of anguish had issued.

He lay among the white stones, too faint with pain to move, but with
an agony in his mind far keener than any bodily pain, as he thought
that by his unfortunate fall he had lost all chance of saving her.
He was almost overpowered by his intense thankfulness when he saw
her white figure pause, and stand listening, and turn again with
slow footsteps, as if searching for some lost thing. He could hardly
speak, but he made a sound which, though his heart was inexpressibly
glad, was like a groan. She came q