When she saw how young she was, the mulatto, a motherly body, took her into a little inner snuggery used to store packages:  “You can turn the key, and sleep if you will until morning.”

“I’ll not close my eyes until my errand is done,” thought Kitty, and sat down in a rocking-chair, placing her satchel beside her.  In five minutes she was fast asleep.  McCall, pacing up and down the platform, could see her through the open window.  He forgot to wonder why she had come.  There was a certain neatness and freshness about her which he thought he had never observed in other women.  After her night’s travel her dress fell soft and gray as though just taken from the fold, her petticoat, crisp and white, peeped in one place to sight.  How dainty and well-fitting were the little boots and gloves!  Where the hair was drawn back, too, from her forehead he could see the blue veins and pink below the skin, like a baby’s.  He did not know before what keen eyes he had.  But this was as though a breath of the old home when he had been a child, one of the dewy Bourbon roses in his father’s garden, had followed him to the stifling town.  It made the station different—­even the morning.  Fresh damp winds blew pleasantly from the reddening sky.  The white marble steps and lintels of the street shone clean and bright; the porters going by to the freight depot gave him good-day cheerfully.  In the window the old mulatto had some thriving pots of ivy and fragrant geraniums.  Even a dog that came frisking up the sidewalk rubbed itself in a friendly fashion against his legs.

McCall suddenly remembered a journey he had made long ago, and a companion whose breath was foul with opium as her head at night rested on his shoulder.

But there was no need that one woman’s breath should sicken him even now with the whole world; and again he stopped in his walk to look at Kitty.

The fresh wind blowing on her wakened her presently.  The mulatto was anxious to serve her:  it was always the case with people of her class after Kitty had once spoken to them.

“I should like fresh water and towels,” she said coolly, as though toilet appurtenances were to be found at every street corner.  The woman paused, and then with a queer smile brought them.  In a a few moments McCall saw her come out fresher than before.

“Where is this house?” showing a name and number to the mulatto, who read it once or twice, and then looked steadily at Kitty.

“Are you going alone to that place?”

“Certainly.”

The woman gave her the directions without further parley, adding that it was about six miles distant, and turned away.  Catharine followed her to thank her, and put a dollar note in her hand.  It was all the money she had.