familiar to him, when she moved forward a pace or two,
her hands fluttering out toward him, then stopped as though halted by a
force implacable and overpowering.

"I thought," she quavered in a stricken voice--"I thought ... you ... my
husband ... Mr. Morton ... the boy said...."

Then her knees buckled under her, and she plunged forward and fell with
a thump that shook the walls.

"I'm sorry--I beg pardon," Whitaker stammered stupidly to ears that
couldn't hear. He swore softly with exasperation, threw his hat to a
chair and dropped to his knees beside the woman. It seemed as if the
high gods were hardly playing fair, to throw a fainting woman on his
hands just then, at a time when he was all preoccupied with his own
absorbing tragedy.

She lay with her head naturally pillowed on the arm she had
instinctively thrown out to protect her face. He could see now that her
slenderness was that of youth, of a figure undeveloped and immature. Her
profile, too, was young, though it stood out against the dark background
of the carpet as set and white as a death-mask. Indeed, her pallor was
so intense that a fear touched his heart, of an accident more serious
than a simple fainting spell. Her respiration seemed entirely suspended,
and it might have been merely his fancy that detected the least
conceivable syncopated pulsation in the icy wrist beneath his fingers.

He weighed quickly half a dozen suggestions. His fundamental impulse, to
call in feminine aid from the staff of the hotel, was promptly relegated
to the status of a last resort, as involving explanations which might
not seem adequate to the singular circumstances; besides, he entertained
a dim, searching, intuitive suspicion that possibly the girl herself
would more cheerfully dispense with explanations--though he hardly knew
why.... He remembered that people burned feathers in such emergencies,
or else loosened the lady's stays (corsets plus a fainting fit equal
stays, invariably, it seems). But there weren't any feathers handy,
and--well, anyway, neither expedient made any real appeal to his
intelligence. Besides, there were sensible things he could do to make
her more comfortable--chafe her hands and administer stimulants: things
like that.

Even while these thoughts were running through his mind, he was
gathering the slight young body into his arms; and he found it really
astonishingly easy to rise and bear her to the bed, where he put her
down flat on her ba