“I had never seen her until the night I saw her here.  She, I learned later, knew me, however, as Harrie’s brother.  I had been told that Harrie was infatuated with her, and, knowing there could only be disaster unless the thing was stopped, I went to see the girl.  The evening you saw me was the second time I had seen her.  I was trying to make her promise to go away.  This isn’t her home.  She came here to get work.”

Selwyn leaned back against the sofa, and his eyes looked into mine with helpless questioning.  “I’ve been brought in contact professionally with many types of human beings, but that girl is the most baffling thing I’ve come across yet.  I can’t make her out.  The night after I saw her here I went to see her at what, I supposed, was her home, just opposite the Hadley box-factory.  Later she told me she didn’t live there, and would not say where she lived.  All the time I talked to her her eyes were on her hands in her lap and, though occasionally her lips would twist, she would say nothing.  It isn’t a pleasant thing for a man to tell a girl his brother isn’t a safe person for her to go with, isn’t one to be trusted, but I did tell her.  She’s an odd little thing, all fire and flame, and to talk frankly was to be brutal, but some day she should thank me.  She won’t do it.  She will hate me always for warning her.  She knew as well as I that marriage was out of the question, and yet she would not promise to give Harrie up.  When you saw me I was on my way for a second talk with her.  Meeting her on the street, I did not go to the house, which she said she had just left, and as she would not tell me where she was going, I had to do my talking as we walked.”

“Did she promise to go away?” I looked into the fire, and the odd, elfish, frightened face of the girl with the baby in her arms looked at me out of the bed of coals.  “Did she promise to go?” I repeated.

Selwyn shook his head.  “She would promise nothing.  I could get nothing out of her, could not make her talk.  Harrie has been a durned fool—­perhaps worse, I don’t know.  I tried to help her, and I failed.”

My fingers interlocked in nervous movements.  Why hadn’t the girl told Selwyn?  Why was she shielding Harrie?  Would she tell me or Mrs. Mundy what she would not tell Selwyn?  I could send Mrs. Mundy to her now—­could break the silence which was mystifying to her.

Selwyn’s hands moved as though to rid them of all further responsibility.  “You can’t do anything with people like that.  She’d rather stay on here and take the chance of seeing Harrie than go away from temptation.  I’m sorry for her, but I’m through.”

“No, you’re not through.  Perhaps we’ve just begun.  Maybe there—­there were reasons of which she couldn’t tell you that kept her here.”  I looked at him, then away.  “The night we heard her fall, heard her cry out; the night we brought her in here, you met some one across the street when you went away.  Was it—­Harrie?”