martyrs nourished.
"Amen!" I have said, when limbs were hewn
And our wounds were blue and ghastly
The flesh of a man may fail and swoon
But God shall conquer lastly.

Part 4

As Jeff helped her from the cab in front of the block where he lived a
limousine flashed past. It caught his glance for an instant, long enough
for him to recognize his Cousin James, Mrs. Van Tyle and Alice Frome.
The arm which supported Nellie did not loosen from her waist, though he
knew they had seen him and would probably draw conclusions.

The young woman was trembling violently.

"My rooms are in the second story. Can you walk? Or shall I carry you?"
Farnum asked.

"I can walk," she told him almost in a whisper.

He got her upstairs and into the big armchair in front of the gas log.
Now that she had slipped out of his rain coat he saw that she was wet
to the skin. From his bedroom he brought a bathrobe, pajamas, woolen
slippers, anything he could find that was warm and soft. In front of her
he dumped them all.

"I'm going down to the drug store to get you something that will warm
you, Nellie. While I'm away change your clothes and get into these
things," he told her.

She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. "You're good."

A lump rose in his heart. He thought of those evenings before the grate
alone with her and of the desperate fight he had had with his passions.
Good! He accused himself bitterly for the harm that he had done her. But
before her his smile was bright and cheerful.

"We're all going to be so good to you that you'll not know us. Haven't
we been waiting two months for a chance to spoil you?"

"Do you... know?" she whispered, color for an instant in her wan face.

"I know things aren't half so bad as they seem to you. Dear girl, we
are your friends. We've not done right by you. Even your mother has
been careless and let you get hurt. But we're going to make it up to you
now."

A man on the other side of the street watched Jeff come down and cross
to the drug store. Billie Gray, ballot box stuffer, detective, and
general handy man for Big Tim O'Brien, had been lurking in that entry
when Jeff came home. He had sneaked up the stairs after them and had
seen the editor disappear into his rooms with one whom he took to be a
woman of the street. Already a second plain clothes man was doing sentry
duty. The policeman whose beat it was sat in the drug store and kept an
eye open from that quart