She shivered all over.

"I--I have no right to tell you," she murmured. "It isn't my
secret. I have no right to say there is any secret. But
there is! And it is making my life a torture! If only you
knew--if only there were some one I could turn to for help or
even for advice! But I'm all alone. except for Milo. And
lately he's changed so! I--"

She broke down all at once in her valiant attempt at
calmness. And burying her face in her hands again she burst
into a tempest of weeping. Gavin Brice, a lump in his own
throat, drew her to him. And she clung to his soaked coat
lapels hiding her head on his drenched breast.

There was nothing of love or of sex in the action. She was
simply a heartbroken child seeking refuge in the strength of
some one older and stronger than she. Gavin realized it, and
he held her to him and comforted her as though she had been
his little sister.

Presently the passion of convulsive weeping passed, leaving
her broken and exhausted. Gavin knew the girl's powers of
mental resistance were no longer strong enough to overcome her
need for a comforter to whom she could unburden her soul of
its miserable perplexities.

She had drawn back from his embrace but she still sat close to
him, her hands in his, pathetically eager for his sympathy and