et out of here!" I cried. "Go--go, Tom Dorgan. I'll send every cent
I've got to you to Mother Douty's within two hours, but don't you
dare--"

"Don't YOU dare, you she-devil! Just make up your mind to drop these
newfangled airs, and mighty quick. I tell you you'll come with me
'cause I need you and I want you, and I want you now. And I'll keep
you when once I get you again. We'll hang together. No more o' this
one-sided lay-out for me, where you get all the soft and it's me for
the hard. You belong to me. Yes, you do. Just think back a bit,
Nance Olden, and remember the kind of customer I am. If you've forgot,
just let me remind you that what I know would put you behind bars, my
lady, and it shall, I swear, if I've got to go to the Chair for it!"

Tom! It was Tom talking that way to me. I couldn't bear it. I made a
rush for the door.

He got there, too, and catching me by the shoulder, he lifted his fist.

But it never fell, Mag. I think I could kill a man who struck me. But
just as I shut my eyes and shivered away from him, while I waited for
the blow, a knock came at the door and Fred Obermuller walked in.

"Eh? Oh! Excuse me. I didn't know there was anybody else. Nance,
your face is ghastly. What's up?" he said sharply.

He looked from me to Tom--Tom, standing off there ready to spring on
him, to dart past him, to fly out of the window--ready for anything;
only waiting to know what the thing was to be.

My senses came back to me then. The sight of Obermuller, with those
keen, quick eyes behind his glasses, his strong, square chin, and the
whole poise of his head and body that makes men wait to hear what he
has to say; the knowledge that that man was my friend, mine--Nancy
Olden's--lifted me out of the mud I'd sunk back in, and put my feet
again on a level with his.

"Tom," I said slowly, "Mr. Obermuller is a friend of mine. No--listen!
What we've been talking about is settled. Don't bring it up again. It
doesn't interest him and it can't change me; I swear to you, it can't;
nothing can. I'm going to ask Mr. Obermuller to help you without
telling him just what the scrape is, and--and I'm going to be sure that
he'll do it just because he--"

"Because you've taken up with him, have you?" Tom shouted savagely.
"Because she's your--"

"Tom!" I cried.

"Tom--oh, yes, now I remember." Obermuller got between us as he spoke.
"Your friend up--in the country that you went to see and couldn't