At the foot he stopped.  To go over was impossible.  He would be recognized.  For half a moment he hesitated.  It was his dinner hour, and he should go home; but he didn’t want to go home.  The stillness and orderliness of his handsome apartment was suddenly irritating.  It seemed a piece of mechanism made to go so smoothly and noiselessly that every element of humanness was lacking in it; and with something of a shiver he turned down the street and in the direction opposite to that wherein he lived.  The child’s eyes had stirred memories that must be kept down; and she was right.  He was a poor man.  He had a house, but no home, and he had no Christmas presents to buy.

CHAPTER V

“Mr. Van!  Mr. Van!”

He turned quickly.  Behind, his new-made acquaintance was making effort to run, but to run and still hold the hand of her father was difficult.  With a smile he stopped.

“Oh, Mr. Van!” The words came breathlessly.  “I was so afraid we would lose you!  Father can’t cross quick, and once I couldn’t see you.  Here he is, Father.”  She took Van Landing’s hand and laid it in her father’s.  “He can tell by hands,” she said, “whether you’re a nice person or not.  I told him you didn’t have anybody, and—­”

Van Landing’s hand for a moment lay in the stranger’s, then he shook the latter’s warmly and again raised his hat.  In the circle of light caused by the electric lamp near which they stood the blind man’s face could be seen distinctly, and in it was that one sees but rarely in the faces of men, and in Van Landing’s throat came sudden tightening.

“Oh, sir, I cannot make her understand, cannot keep her from talking to strangers!” The troubled voice was of a strange quality for so shabbily clothed a body, and in the eyes that saw not, and which were lifted to Van Landing’s, was sudden terror.  “She believes all people to be her friends.  I cannot always be with her, and some day—­”

“But, Father, you said that whoever didn’t have any friends must be our friend, because—­because that’s all we can be—­just friends.  And he hasn’t any.  I mean anybody to make Christmas for.  He said so himself.  And can’t he go with us to-night and see the shops?  I know he’s nice, Father.  Please, please let him!”

The look of terrified helplessness which for a moment swept over the gentle face, wherein suffering and sorrow had made deep impress, but in which was neither bitterness nor complaint, stirred the heart within him as not for long it had been stirred, and quickly Van Landing spoke.

“It may not be a good plan generally, but this time it was all right,” he said.  “She spoke to me because she thought I could not see what was going on across the street, and very kindly shared her better position with me.  I—­” He hesitated.  His name would mean nothing to the man before him.  Their worlds were very different worlds.  It was possible, however, that this gentle, shrinking creature, with a face so spiritualized by life’s denials that it shamed him as he looked, knew more of his, Van Landing’s, world than he of the blind man’s, and suddenly, as if something outside himself directed, he yielded to a strange impulse.