nizing, heartrending pity.

She still stared at him, terrorized. Probably she had never seen any
face come in at that door except her mother's.

His pity must have given Walker Farr a hint of how to deal with this
frightened child. He did not speak to her. He made no move toward her.

He smiled!

But it was not the smile he had given the fat plutocrat in the
automobile, nor yet the jocular radiance he had displayed to old
Etienne. It was such a smile as the man had never smiled before--and he
realized it. He did not want to smile. He wanted to weep. But he brought
that smile from tender depths in his soul--depths he had not known of
before--and tears came with the smile.

Before that time the lines in his face had fitted the smile of the
cynic, the grimace of banter, of irony and insolence. But the strange
glory that now glowed upon his features came there after the mightiest
effort he had ever made to control his feelings and his expression.

He smiled!

In that smile he soothed, he promised, he appealed. Then when he saw the
tense expression of fear fade away he smiled more broadly--he provoked
reply in kind. And slowly upon the child's face an answering smile began
to dawn--little crinkles at the corners of the drooping mouth, little
flickerings in the blue eyes, until at last the two beaming faces
pledged--on the part of the man tender protection, on the part of the
child unquestioning confidence.

But he said no word--he dared not trust his voice.

He went down on his knees cautiously, her smile welcoming him now.

He held out his hands. She hesitated a moment and then gave into them
her chiefest possession--her rag doll. It was as if she had pledged her
faith in him. He danced the doll upon his broad palm, and the child's
eyes, dancing too, thanked him for the courtesy he was paying to her
dearest friend.

But Walker Farr realized that something strange and disquieting in the
case of a man who believed himself a cynic was stirring within him.
That hostage of the doll was not sufficient to satisfy the sudden queer
craving. The knowledge of the hopeless helplessness of that little girl
throbbed through him. The memory of the spectacle of what he had left on
the canal bank made the pathos of this little scene in the garret doubly
poignant as he looked into the child's eyes. Never, in his memory, had
he invited a child to come to him.

Now he put out his hand--and it trembled. She snuggled her warm littl