h tightened to the torture as she turned the screw.

She went on. "Lenny was all right. He was good to me as long as I was
with him. _He_ wouldn't have turned me into the street to starve."

"Who _has_ turned you into the street?" He could not disguise his
exasperation.

Then he remembered. "Oh--your father."

"I don't mean Father. I mean the other one."

"There _was_ another one? And you expect me to take you back?"

"I'm only _asking_ you," she said. "Don't be so hard on me. I _had_ to
have some one when Lenny left me. He's been the only one since Lenny.
And he was all right until he tired of me."

"Who's the brute you're talking about?"

"He's a gentleman. That's all I can tell you."

"Sounds pretty high class. And where does this gentleman hang out?"

"I oughtn't to tell you. He's a painter, and he's awfully well known.
Well--it's somewhere in the West End, and we had a flat in Bloomsbury."

She answered his wonder. "I met him in Paris. He took me away from
there, and I've been with him all the time. There wasn't anybody else. I
swear there wasn't--I swear."

"Oh, you needn't."

He got up and walked away.

"Ranny--don't go for the cab until I've told you everything."

"I'm _not_ going. What more have you got to say?"

"Don't look at me like that, as if you could murder me. You wouldn't if
you knew how he's served me. He beat me, Ranny. He beat me with his
hands and with his stick."

She rolled up the sleeves of her thin blouse.

"Look here--and here. That's what he was always doing to me. And I've
got worse--bigger ones--on me breast and on me body."

"Good God--" The words came from him under his breath, and not even his
instinct knew what he would say next.

He said--or rather some unknown power took hold of him and said it--"Why
didn't you come to me before?"

She hesitated.

"He never turned me out until last night."

Her pause gave him time to measure the significance of what she said.

"He didn't really tire of me till I got ill. I had pneumonia last
spring. I nearly died of it, and I've not been right since. That's how I
got me cough. He couldn't stand it."

She paused.

"I ought to have gone when he told me to. But I didn't. I was awfully
gone on him.

"And--last night--we were to have gone to the theater together; but he'd
been drinkin' and I said I wouldn't go with him. Then he swore at me and
struck me, and said I might go by myself. And I went. And when I came
home he s