his best because most natural. But this was a new Marcia, a Marcia whose
delicate, childlike face was stamped with grief; a child in distress and
a child who needed comforting. Just as once before, when there was no
escape, Paul had fought the Marquess kid and had been astonished at the
ease of battle, so now an impulse seized him and he found himself acting
without premeditation. He was the man looking on at the tears of a
woman, and a woman whose laughter had often been his comfort.
Instinctively he folded her in his arms and kissed the soft hair which
was all that showed itself of the bowed head and hidden face.

Now when for the first time he held her close to him he felt a tremor of
sobs run through the slender figure. His pulses heightened their tempo
as he became conscious of the soft palpitation of her shoulders and
bosom.

Sympathy, he thought, actuated him. He took the averted face between his
hands and raised it gently, but with a strong pressure until the
tear-stained eyes were looking into his own.

Her lips were very petal-like and her eyes were very dewy and on each
cheek bloomed a spot of color heightened by the pallor of the moment.

Paul Burton at the instant forgot Loraine Haswell, the prize of his
brother's grand larceny for his pleasure, forgot that this woman was no
more than his Platonic friend and remembered only that her chin rested
in his hand and that his arm encircled her, as he bent his head and
pressed his lips against the mouth that trembled.

He did not think of the demonstration as necessarily loverlike. His
nature was instinctive, not analytical, but suddenly there swept into