some hard times, and she's about
come to the end of her rope. Good Lord, the way life is! When I first
saw her out in California she was one of the prettiest pieces of flesh I
ever laid eyes on. She had something of your look, too, though you
wouldn't believe it now."

But the girl had already started to cross the street. "Don't let's waste
any time talking. Which way do we go?"

At her decision his hesitation vanished, and he joined her with a laugh
and a flourish of the diamond ring on the little finger of his left
hand. "Well, you are a sport, Patty! You always were, even when you
weren't much more than knee high to a duck. If you've made up your mind
to go, you won't be blaming me afterward?"

"Oh, I shan't blame you, of course. Do we turn up this street?"

"Yes, go ahead. It ain't far--just a little way up Leigh Street."

They walked on rapidly, and presently, so swift and determined was
Patty's step, Gershom ceased to speak, and only glanced at her now and
then in a furtive and anxious way. There was a look of tragic resolution
on her small face--oh, she was meeting life in earnest, she
reflected--and even to the coarse mind and the dull imagination of the
man beside her, she assumed gradually the appearance of some ethereal
messenger. At the moment she was thinking of Stephen, but this he did
not suspect. He saw only that there was something almost unearthly in
her expression; and he felt the kind of awe that came over him on Sunday
when he entered a church. He wouldn't hurt the girl, he told himself,
with a twinge, for a pocketful of money.

They had turned into Leigh Street, and had walked some distance in
silence, when Patty asked suddenly without looking round, "Then she
doesn't know I am coming?"

"I told her I'd bring you whenever I could; but she ain't looking for
you this evening. There, that's the house--the one in the middle, with
that wooden swing and all those kids in the yard."

He pointed to what had once been a fine old house of stuccoed brick,
with a square front porch and green shutters which were sagging on
loosened hinges. On the walls where the stucco had peeled away, the red
brick showed in splotches, and the pillars of the porch, which had been
white, were now speckled with yellow stains. Over the whole place, with
its air of fallen respectability, there hung the depressing smell of
mingled dust, stale cooking, and bad tobacco. A number of imposing and
well-preserved houses stood on