She never before had seen a man show suffering.

The misery she had known in life had been more or less veiled to her and softened by falling on older and friendly shoulders.
She now got for the first time a clear view of Carrington, apart from the quiet exterior in which the man was hidden.

She felt quite sure, by a sudden flash of feminine inspiration, that the curious look of patient endurance on his face was the work of a single night when he had held his brother in his arms, and knew that the blood was draining drop by drop from his side, in the dense, tangled woods, beyond the reach of help, hour after hour, till the voice failed and the limbs grew stiff and cold.

When he had finished his story, she was afraid to speak.

She did not know how to show her sympathy, and she could not bear to seem unsympathetic.