Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/138

 Jamie combed the streaming locks from his cheeks and his lips with his fingers and sat tightly holding them in his hand. And he who had gone out to compare the battle of Nature with the battle of his soul, forgot all about himself as he said to the girl beside him: “Did anybody ever tell you that a trouble shared is a trouble half endured?”

Then he laughed a deep burry Scotch laugh. He threw out his right arm and felt to the north until he circled the shoulders of the woman beside him.

“You aren’t half covered,” he said, “and you are drenched! Creep over here in the protection of my coat. And then, because it is night, and because I know that your soul is wracked and maybe your body tortured, tell me the truth. I’m sure I can help you. There is always a way. I can think of something.”

Jamie never forgot that when his arm reached across the shoulder beside him there was no shrinking, no repulsion, no hesitation. It took one more flash of lightning to show him that the woman he was trying to comfort was young. She was not beautiful, but she was luringly human. Plastered with rain, wrenched with grief, he had no right to judge her.

“I mean it,” he said, taking up the thread of his thought again. “I mean it. If you will tell me, I promise to help you.”

“But—but how can you help me?” said a voice, every tone of which Jamie registered as it fell on his ear.

“I don’t know,” said Jamie. “I don’t know how I can help you, because I don’t know what you need. I only