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"]