say that he could. She took a roll out of her bag, and
quietly pointed to her arm. He did his best, not without skill, and the
deep line of pain furrowing the centre of the brow relaxed a little.
Then she sank down on the floor again beside her patient, gazing
at the woman's marred face--indescribably patient in its deep
unconsciousness--at the gnarled and bloodstained hands, with their
wedding-ring; at the thin locks of torn grey hair--with tears that ran
unheeded down her cheeks, in a passion of anguished pity, which touched
a chord of memory in Raeburn's mind. He had seen her look so once
before--beside Minta Hurd, on the day of Hurd's capture.

At the same moment he saw that they were alone. The policeman had
cleared the room, and was spending the few minutes that must elapse
before his companion returned with the stretcher, in taking the names
and evidence of some of the inmates of the house, on the stairs outside.

"You can't do anything more," said Aldous, gently, bending over her.
"Won't you let me take you home?--you want it sorely. The police are
trained to these things, and I have a friend here who will help. They
will remove her with every care--he will see to it."

Then for the first time her absorption gave way. She remembered who he
was--where they were--how they had last met. And with the remembrance
came an extraordinary leap of joy, flashing through pain and faintness.
She had the childish feeling that he could not look unkindly at her
anymore--after this! When at the White House she had got herself into
disgrace, and could not bring her pride to ask pardon, she would
silently set up a headache or a cut finger that she might be pitied, and
so, perforce, forgiven. The same tacit thought was in her mind now.
No!--after this he _must_ be friends with her.

"I will just help to get her downstairs," she said, but with a
quivering, appealing accent--and so they fell silent.

Aldous looked round the room--at the miserable filthy garret with its
begrimed and peeling wall-paper, its two or three broken chairs, its
heap of rags across two boxes that served for a bed; its empty
gin-bottles here and there--all the familiar, one might almost say
conventionalised, signs of human ruin and damnation--then at this
breathing death between himself and her. Perhaps his strongest feeling
was one of fierce and natural protest against circumstance--against her
mother!--against a reckless philanthropy that could thus thro