here was a crowd.
Something had happened, and only a moment ago, for a policeman was just
coming up. The chauffeur would have hurried by to spare Mrs. Sands what
might be an unpleasant sight, but on one of her impulses she stopped
him. The car windows were open. Beverley heard the words "Poor child"
and "Ambulance." She opened the door and jumped out. Because she was
beautiful and beautifully dressed, and had a fine car, people made way
for her.

On the pavement a girl was lying. There was some blood, and that would
have made Beverley sick, if the face streaked red hadn't struck her as
the most tragic, the most pathetic face she had ever seen. It was so
ghastly white, so thin, and yet so young!

"What is it? What's happened?" she inquired of the innermost group.

"Chucked herself out of a fourth story window," a fat woman answered.
"Somebody was beastly to her, I guess."

"Is she dead?" Beverley asked.

"Not yet ... though she must be a bag o' broken bones. She'll die on the
way to hospital, likely, in the ambulance, with nobody to care."

At that instant, as if she heard the terrible words, the girl's eyes
opened. It seemed to Beverley that they looked straight at her.

Suddenly she remembered her own resolve. It had been almost a vow: "To
the first creature I meet to-day who needs help I'll give it."

Here was the creature. If ever there were an appeal in human eyes, it
was in these. Perhaps it was an unconscious appeal. Perhaps the brain
had been stunned asleep, but the deep-down soul was awake. It was
calling to Beverley's soul, and the call had to be answered, or the vow
would be broken. Roger Sands' wife dared not break such a vow lest she
should be punished and lose her magical happiness.

She hated the sight of blood. She wanted to think that, if the girl were
dying, she could do no good. Yet, while reason argued, instinct had
already decided that this was the claimant of the vow. Beverley knelt
down beside the curiously flat-looking body which lay on the pavement.
Her dress dipped into a widening pool of blood, but she did not sicken
as she had thought she would. And to her own surprise she found her hand
stroking back a lock of dark red hair from the upturned face. Poor,
thin, child's face!

"Don't be afraid, you're going to be loved and cared for," she promised.

By this time a doctor had arrived. He, too, knelt by the sufferer. He
spoke to Beverley, thinking she had some acquaintance with the inj