The pale light of the early winter morning showed a depressing interior, for the window was not the only opening. There was a great gap in the roof where, earlier in the night, the chimney had fallen, and now its bricks littered the floor, already well covered with snow. Some attempt must have been made, as McVay had boasted, of “fixing it up”; there were books in the shelves on the walls, and a black iron stove on which the snow now lay fearlessly. As Geoffrey took in the situation, something in a huge chair, which he had taken for a heap of rugs, stirred and moved, and finally rose, betraying itself to be a woman. Geoffrey had been prepared to find a den of thieves, or nothing at all, or even a girl, as McVay had said. He told himself he would be surprised at nothing, yet found himself astounded, overwhelmed at the sight of a beautiful face. The girl must have been beautiful so to triumph over her surroundings, for all sorts of strange garments were huddled about her, and over all a silk coverlet originally tied like a shawl under her chin, had slipped sideways, and fell like a Hussar’s jacket from one shoulder. Her hair stood like a dark halo about her little face, making it seem smaller and younger, almost too small for the magnificent eyes that lit it. Geoffrey, tolerably well versed in feminine attractions, said to himself that he had never seen such blue eyes. And suddenly while he looked at her and her desperate plight, pity became in him a sort of fury of protection, the awakening of the masculine instinct toward beauty in distress. It was a feeling that the other women he had admired—well-fed, well-clothed, well-cared-for young creatures—had always signally failed to arouse. He had seen it in other men, had seen their hearts wrung because an able-bodied girl must take a trolley car instead of her father’s carriage, but he had thought himself hard, perhaps, unchivalrous; but now he knew better. Now he knew what it was to feel personally outraged at a woman’s discomfort. “Good God!” he cried, “what a night you have had. How wicked, how abominable, how criminal—” [Illustration: “Good god,” he cried “what a night you have had”] “It has been a dreadful night,” said the girl, “but it is nobody’s fault.” “Of course it is somebody’s fault,” answered Geoffrey. “It must be. Do you mean to tell me no one is to blame when I have been sitting all night with my feet on the fender, and you—” “Certainly,” said she with an extraordinarily wide, sweet smile, “I could wish we might have changed places.” “I wish to Heaven we might,” returned Geoffrey, and meant it. Never before had he yearned to bear the sufferings of another. He had often seen that it was advisable, suitable just that he should, but burningly to want to was a new experience. “Thank you,” said the girl, “but I’m afraid there is nothing to be done.” “Nothing to be done!” He dropped on his knees before the black monster of a stove, “Do you suppose I’m here to do nothing?”