an
old friend. "I've got to get a long ways from here. As soon as
it's dark I'm going."

"Where?"

"Toward the river." And her eyes lit.

"The river? What's there?"

"I don't know," said she triumphantly.

But he understood. He had the spirit of adventure himself--one
could see it at a glance--the spirit that instinctively shuns
yesterday and all its works and wings eagerly into tomorrow,
unknown, different, new--therefore better. But this girl, this
child-woman--or was she rather woman-child?--penniless, with
nothing but two eggs between her and starvation, alone, without
plans, without experience--

What would become of her?. . . "Aren't you--afraid?" he asked.

"Of what?" she inquired calmly.

It was the mere unconscious audacity of ignorance, yet he saw in
her now--not fancied he saw, but saw--a certain strength of
soul, both courage and tenacity. No, she might suffer, sink--but
she would die fighting, and she would not be afraid. And he
admired and envied her.

"Oh, I'll get along somehow," she assured him in the same
self-reliant tone. Suddenly she felt it would no longer give her
the horrors to speak of what she had been through. "I'm not very
old," said she, and hers was the face of a woman now. "But I've
learned a great deal."

"You are sure you are not making a mistake in--in--running away?"

"I couldn't do anything else," replied she. "I'm all alone in
the world. There's no one--except----

"I hadn't done anything, and they said I had disgraced them--and
they----" Her voice faltered, her eyes sank, the color flooded
into her face. "They gave me to a man--and he--I had hardly seen
him before--he----" She tried but could not pronounce the
dreadful word.

"Married, you mean?" said the young man gently.

The girl shuddered. "Yes," she answered. "And I ran away."

So strange, so startling, so moving was the expression of her
face that he could not speak for a moment. A chill crept over
him as he watched her wide eyes gazing into vacancy. What vision
of horror was she seeing, he wondered. To rouse her he spoke the
first words he could assemble:

"When was this?"

The vision seemed slowly to fade and she looked at him in
astonishment. "Why, it was last night!" she said, as if dazed by
the discovery. "Only last night!"

"Last night! Then you haven't got far."

"No. But I must. I will. And I'm not afraid of anything except
of being taken back."

"But you don't