do you? Why, I could face him myself now that I know you care for me.
A girl can always put up a fight. You believe me? Only it isn't easy to
stand up for yourself when you feel there's nothing and nobody at your
back. There's nothing so lonely in the world as a girl who has got to
look after herself. When I left poor dad in that home--it was in the
country, near a village--I came out of the gates with seven shillings
and threepence in my old purse, and my railway ticket. I tramped a mile,
and got into a train--"

She broke off, and was silent for a moment.

"Don't you throw me over now," she went on. "If you did, what should
I do? I should have to live, to be sure, because I'd be afraid to kill
myself, but you would have done a thousand times worse than killing a
body. You told me you had been always alone, you had never had a dog
even. Well, then, I won't be in anybody's way if I live with you--not
even a dog's. And what else did you mean when you came up and looked at
me so close?"

"Close? Did I?" he murmured unstirring before her in the profound
darkness. "So close as that?"

She had an outbreak of anger and despair in subdued tones.

"Have you forgotten, then? What did you expect to find? I know what sort
of girl I am; but all the same I am not the sort that men turn their
backs on--and you ought to know it, unless you aren't made like the
others. Oh, forgive me! You aren't like the others; you are like no one
in the world I ever spoke to. Don't you care for me? Don't you see--?"

What he saw was that, white and spectral, she was putting out her arms
to him out of the black shadows like an appealing ghost. He took her
hands, and was affected, almost surprised, to find them so warm, so
real, so firm, so living in his grasp. He drew her to him, and she
dropped her head on his shoulder with a deep-sigh.

"I am dead tired," she whispered plaintively.

He put his arms around her, and only by the convulsive movements of her
body became aware that she was sobbing without a sound. Sustaining her,
he lost himself in the profound silence of the night. After a while she
became still, and cried quietly. Then, suddenly, as if waking up, she
asked:

"You haven't seen any more of that somebody you thought was spying
about?"

He started at her quick, sharp whisper, and answered that very likely he
had been mistaken.

"If it was anybody at all," she reflected aloud, "it wouldn't have been
anyone but that hotel woma