“I will see Mr. Crimm to-night.  It won’t be new to him—­the finding of a girl who’s disappeared.  He’s found too many.  I’ll be careful what I tell him, and Mr. Thorne needn’t worry.”  Mrs. Mundy got up.  “Didn’t you say he was coming this afternoon?”

“He is coming to-night.  I am going out this afternoon.”

Mrs. Mundy walked slowly to the door.  She would have enjoyed talking longer, but I could not talk.  A sense of involvement with things that frightened and repelled, with things of which I had hitherto been irresponsibly ignorant, was bewildering me and I wanted to be alone.  I knew I was a coward, but there was no special need of her knowing it.

I had been honest in thinking I wanted to know all sorts of people, to see myself, and women like me, from the viewpoint of those denied my opportunities, but it had not occurred to me as a possibility of Scarborough Square that I should come in contact with any of the women of Lillie Pierce’s world.  People like that had hardly seemed the human beings other people were.  And now—­

“Tell Mr. Crimm whatever you think best.”  My back was to Mrs. Mundy.  “The girl is in trouble.  You must see her.  Bring her here if you cannot go to her, and try and learn her side of the story.  It’s an old one, perhaps, but it isn’t fair that—­”

“She should be shoved into hell and the lid shut down to keep her in, and the man let alone to go where he pleases.  It isn’t fair, but it’s the world’s way, and always will be lessen women learn some things they ought to know.  They wouldn’t stand for some of the things that go on if they understood them, but they don’t understand.  They’ve been tongue-tied and hand-tied so long, they haven’t taken in yet they’ve got to do their own untying.”

“It’s a pretty lonely job—­and a pretty hard one.”  I turned from the window.  Kitty’s automobile had stopped in front of the house.  I was to go in it to call on Mrs. and Miss Swink.  Kitty had insisted that I use it.

I dressed quickly, putting on my best garments, but as I got into the car something of the old protest at having to do what I did not want to do, to go where I did not want to go, came over me, and I was conscious of childish irritability.  I did not care to know the Swinks.  Eternity wouldn’t be long enough, and certainly time wasn’t to waste on people like that, and yet because Selwyn had asked me to call I was doing it.  All men are alike.  When they don’t know how to do a thing that’s got to be done, they tell a woman to do it.  It was not my business to tell this Swink person and her daughter that they should be careful concerning matrimonial alliances.  I would agree with them that such intimation on my part was presumptuous and I had no intention of making it.  What I was going to do I did not know, but it was necessary to see them, talk with them before any suggestions could be made to Selwyn as to a tactful handling of an embarrassing situation; and in obedience to this primary requisite I was calling.