come to the end now, where no one can help. I have tried to carry
it through alone. I did not want to burden you with my troubles and--if
I could prevent it, I would not now, but you will know it sooner or
later, and I would rather tell you myself than have you hear it from
strangers."

He hesitated for an instant, looked into her eyes, and said slowly: "The
woman you picked up in the street and who is now in prison, is my wife,
or was, until a year ago."

Kitty neither moved nor spoke. The announcement did not greatly surprise
her. What absorbed her was the new, hard lines in his face, her wonder
being that such suffering should have fallen upon the head of a man who
so little deserved it.

"And is that what has been breakin' yer heart all these months ye lived
with us?"

Felix moved uneasily. "Yes. There has been nothing else."

"And she's the same one ye've been a-trampin' the streets to find?"

Felix bowed his head in assent.

"And ye kep' all this from me?" she asked, as a mother might reproach
her son.

"You could have done nothing."

"I could have comforted ye. That would have been somethin'. Did she
leave ye?"

Again Felix bowed his head in answer. The spoken words would only add to
his pain.

"For another man, was it?--Yes, I see--you twice her age, and she a chit
of a child. Ye can't do much for that kind once they get their heads
set--no matter how good ye are to them. And I suppose that when I found
her that night on the door-steps and brought her into the kitchen, he'd
turned her into the street. That's it, isn't it? And then she got to
stealin' to keep from starvin'?"

"Yes, I suppose so--I do not know. I only know she is a criminal. That
is shame enough."

"And is that all ye came to tell me?" She was going to the bottom of it
now. This man was gripped in the tortures of the damned and could only
be helped when he had emptied out his heart--all of it, down to the very
dregs.

"No, there is something else. I wanted to speak to you about Masie. I
may go back to England in a few days and I am not satisfied to leave her
unprotected. She has no mother and you have no daughter--would you
look after her for me? I have learned to love her very dearly--and I
am greatly disturbed over her future and who is to look after her. Her
father will not listen to any plans I might make for her, nor will he
take proper care of her. He thinks he does, but he lets her do as she
pleases. She will be a woman