Wemyss was like a child in his misery. He very nearly cried outright when he got to the gate and took off his hat, and the girl looked at him blankly just as if she still didn't see him and hadn't heard him when he said, 'Could you let me have a glass of water? I--it's so hot----' He began to stammer because of her eyes. 'I--I'm horribly thirsty--the heat----' He pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead. He certainly looked very hot. His face was red and distressed, and his forehead dripped. He was all puckered, like an unhappy baby. And the girl looked so cool, so bloodlessly cool. Her hands, folded on the top bar of the gate, looked more than cool, they looked cold; like hands in winter, shrunk and small with cold. She had bobbed hair, he noticed, so that it was impossible to tell how old she was, brown hair from which the sun was beating out bright lights; and her small face had no colour except those wide eyes fixed on his and the colour of her rather big mouth; but even her mouth seemed frozen. 'Would it be much bother----' began Wemyss again; and then his situation overwhelmed him. 'You would be doing a greater kindness than you know,' he said, his voice trembling with unhappiness, 'if you would let me come into the garden a minute and rest.' At the sound of the genuine wretchedness in his voice Lucy's blank eyes became a little human. It got through to her consciousness that this distressed warm stranger was appealing to her for something. 'Are you so hot?' she asked, really seeing him for the first time. 'Yes, I'm hot,' said Wemyss. 'But it isn't that. I've had a misfortune--a terrible misfortune----' He paused, overcome by the remembrance of it, by the unfairness of so much horror having overtaken him. 'Oh, I'm sorry,' said Lucy vaguely, still miles away from him, deep in indifference. 'Have you lost anything?' 'Good God, not that sort of misfortune!' cried Wemyss. 'Let me come in a minute--into the garden a minute--just to sit a minute with a human being. You would be doing a great kindness. Because you're a stranger I can talk to you about it if you'll let me. Just because we're strangers I could talk. I haven't spoken to a soul but servants and official people since--since it happened. For two days I haven't spoken at all to a living soul--I shall go mad----' His voice shook again with his unhappiness, with his astonishment at his unhappiness.