broad wet washes of white and blue; but Darrow again noticed
that her visual sensitiveness was less keen than her feeling
for what he was sure the good Farlows--whom he already
seemed to know--would have called "the human interest." She
seemed hardly conscious of sensations of form and colour, or
of any imaginative suggestion, and the spectacle before
them--always, in its scenic splendour, so moving to her
companion--broke up, under her scrutiny, into a thousand
minor points: the things in the shops, the types of
character and manner of occupation shown in the passing
faces, the street signs, the names of the hotels they
passed, the motley brightness of the flower-carts, the
identity of the churches and public buildings that caught
her eye. But what she liked best, he divined, was the mere
fact of being free to walk abroad in the bright air, her
tongue rattling on as it pleased, while her feet kept time
to the mighty orchestration of the city's sounds. Her
delight in the fresh air, in the freedom, light and sparkle
of the morning, gave him a sudden insight into her stifled
past; nor was it indifferent to him to perceive how much his
presence evidently added to her enjoyment. If only as a
sympathetic ear, he guessed what he must be worth to her.
The girl had been dying for some one to talk to, some one
before whom she could unfold and shake out to the light her
poor little shut-away emotions. Years of repression were
revealed in her sudden burst of confidence; and the pity she
inspired made Darrow long to fill her few free hours to the
brim.

She had the gift of rapid definition, and his questions as