Her beautiful face was full of the most poignant sympathy.
"Oh, what is the matter, Mr.West ?" she said.

"I was here when you came in.

I saw how dreadfully distressed you looked, and when I heard you groan, I could not keep silent.

What has happened to you?
Where have you been?
Can't I do something for you ?" Perhaps she involuntarily held out her hands in a gesture of compassion as she spoke.

At any rate I had caught them in my own and was clinging to them with an impulse as instinctive as that which prompts the drowning man to seize upon and cling to the rope which is thrown him as he sinks for the last time.