The settled form of the event, when put into words, went sharp to her heart; her moans and sobs wrung his soul; but as no speech of his could be heard, if he had been able to decide what best to say, he stood by her in apparent calmness, while she, wretched, wailed and uttered her woe.

But when she lay worn out, and stupefied into silence, she heard him say to himself, in a low voice: "Oh, my God! for Christ's sake, pity her!" Ruth lifted up her eyes, and looked at him with a dim perception of the meaning of his words.

She regarded him fixedly in a dreamy way, as if they struck some chord in her heart, and she were listening to its echo; and so it was.

His pitiful look, or his words, reminded her of the childish days when she knelt at her mother's knee, and she was only conscious of a straining, longing desire to recall it all.
He let her take her time, partly because he was powerfully affected himself by all the circumstances, and by the sad pale face upturned to his; and partly by an instinctive consciousness that the softest patience was required.

But suddenly she startled him, as she herself was startled into a keen sense of the suffering agony of the present; she sprang up and pushed him aside, and went rapidly towards the gate of the field.