moss-grown logs lay fallen among the brambles.

Catching sight of what looked like a strip of woven fabric beneath a
brake, Vane strode toward it. Then he stopped with a start, for a young
girl lay with her face hidden from him, in an attitude of dejected
abandonment. He was about to turn away softly, when she started and
looked up at him. Her long dark lashes glistened and her eyes were wet,
but they were of the deep blue he had described to Carroll, and he
stood still.

"You really shouldn't give way like that," he said.

It was all he could think of, but he spoke without obtrusive assurance or
pronounced embarrassment; and the girl, shaking out her crumpled skirt
over one little foot, with a swift sinuous movement, choked back a sob
and favored him with a glance of keen scrutiny as she rose to a sitting
posture. She was quick at reading character--the life she led had made
that necessary--and his manner and appearance were reassuring. He was on
the whole a well-favored man--good-looking seemed the best word for
it--though what impressed her most was his expression. It indicated that
he regarded her with some pity, not as an attractive young woman, which
she knew she was, but merely as a human being. The girl, however, said
nothing; and, sitting down on a neighboring boulder, Vane took out his
pipe from force of habit.

"Well," he added, in much the same tone he would have used to a
distressed child, "what's the trouble?"

She told him, speaking on impulse.