He looked at her as she stood before him, so much like a child, and yet enough of a woman to make his own cheeks burn.

And then he saw a sudden changing expression come into her face.

There was something pathetic about it, something that made him see again what he had forgotten--her exhaustion, the evidences of her struggle.

She was looking at his pack.
"We haven't had anything to eat since we ran away," she said simply.
"I'm hungry." He had heard children say "I'm hungry" in that same voice, with the same hopeful and entreating insistence in it; he had spoken those words himself a thousand times, to his mother, in just that same way, it seemed to him; and as she stood there, looking at his pack, he was filled with a very strong desire to crumple her close in his arms--not as a woman, but as a child.

And this desire held him so still for a moment that she thought he was waiting for her to explain.
"I fastened our bundle on Tara's back and we lost it in the night coming up over the mountain," she said.