ne as you would, untouched.
That was through me. Now, fools, you must take your turn--one month,
three months, six months--who knows?--in prison. One carries a knife
--one goes to prison! What would you have?"

"Gif der yong man a chair, Tonio," said the fat man, and his
companion reached Dawson a seat. He sat on it in the middle of the
floor, while they wrangled around him. He gathered that the two men
anticipated a visit from the police very shortly, and that they
blamed it on the woman, who might have averted it. Both the men
accused her of their misfortune, and she faced them dauntlessly. She
tried to bring them, it seemed, to accept it as inevitable, as a
thing properly attendant on them; to show that she, after all, could
not change the conditions of existence.

"You stabbed the Greek," she argued once, turning sharply on the tall
man.

"Well," he began, and she flourished her hand as an ergo.

"Life is not spending money," she even philosophized. "One pays for
living, my friend, with work, with pain, with jail. Here you have to
pay. I have paid for you, seven months nearly, with smiles and love.
But the price is risen. It is your turn now."

Dawson gazed at her fascinated. She spoke and gesticulated with a
captivating spirit. Life brimmed in her. As she spoke, her motions
were arguments in themselves. She put a case and demolished it with a
smile; presented the alternative, left a final word unspoken, and the
thing was irresistible. Dawson, perched lonely on his chair,
experienced a desire to enter the conversation.

The men were beyond conviction. "Why didn't you"--do this or that?
the tall man kept asking, and his fat comrade exploded, "Yea, vy?"
They seemed to demand of her that she should accept blame without
question; and to her answers, clear and ready, the fat man retorted
with a gross oath.

"Excuse me, sir," began Dawson, shocked. He was aching to be on the
woman's side.

"Vott" demanded the fat man.

"That's hardly the way to speak to a lady," said Dawson gravely.

The tall man burst into a clear laugh, and the fat man glared at
Dawson. He flinched somewhat, but caught the woman's eye and found
comfort and reinforcement there. She, too, was smiling, but
gratefully, and she gave him a courteous little nod of thanks.

"I don't like to hear such language used to a lady," he said,
speaking manfully enough, and giving the fat man eyes as steady as
his own. "No gentleman would do it, I'm sure."