stirred by her beauty and her trouble, stepped nearer to her, for
she swayed with her emotion as if she were about to fall.
Impulsively she put a hand on his arm, and the Pomeranian,
dropped unceremoniously to the ground, sprang at Cleggett
snarling and snapping as if sure he were the author of the lady's
misfortunes.

"You will think I am mad," said the lady, endeavoring to control
her tears, "but I MUST have ice. Don't tell me that you have no
ice!"

"My dear lady," said Cleggett, unconsciously clasping, in his
anxiety to reassure her, the hand that she had laid upon his arm,
"I have ice--you shall have all the ice you want!"

"Oh," she murmured, leaning towards him, "you cannot know----"

But the rest was lost in an incoherent babble, and with a deep
sigh she fell lax into Cleggett's arms. The reaction from
despair had been too much for her; it had come too suddenly; at
the first word of reassurance, at the first ray of dawning hope,
she had fainted. High-strung natures, intrepid in the face of
danger, are apt to such collapses in the moment of deliverance;
and, whatever the nature of the lady's trouble, Cleggett gained
from her swoon a sharp sense of its intensity.

Cleggett was not used to having beautiful women faint and fall
into his arms, and he was too much of a gentleman to hold one
there a single moment longer than was absolutely necessary. He
turned his head rather helplessly towards the vehicle in which