“Who is she?  Who is she?” the conglomerate hum of inquiry rose and fell like a moan.

Beneath the crimson stain on the little lace handkerchief a trace of indelible ink showed faintly.  Scowlingly Barton bent to decipher it.  “Mother’s Little Handkerchief,” the marking read. “‘Mother’s?’” Barton repeated blankly.  Then suddenly full comprehension broke upon him, and, horridly startled and shocked with a brand-new realization of the tragedy, he fairly blurted out his astonishing information.

“Why—­why, it’s the—­little Edgarton girl!” he hurled like a bombshell into the surrounding company.

Instantly, with the mystery once removed, a dozen hysterical people seemed startled into normal activity.  No one knew exactly what to do, but some ran for water and towels, and some ran for the doctor, and one young woman with astonishing acumen slipped out of her white silk petticoat and bound it, blue ribbons and all, as best she could, around Eve Edgarton’s poor little gashed head.

[Illustration:  Suddenly full comprehension broke upon him and he fairly blurted out his astonishing information]

“We must carry her up-stairs!” asserted the hotel proprietor.

“I’ll carry her!” said Barton quite definitely.

Fantastically the procession started upward—­little Eve Edgarton white as a ghost now in Barton’s arms, except for that one persistent trickle of red from under the loosening edge of her huge Oriental-like turban of ribbon and petticoat; the hotel proprietor still worrying eternally how to explain everything; two or three well-intentioned women babbling inconsequently of other broken heads.

In astonishingly slow response to as violent a knock as they thought they gave, Eve Edgarton’s father came shuffling at last to the door to greet them.  Like one half paralyzed with sleep and perplexity, he stood staring blankly at them as they filed into his rooms with their burden.

“Your daughter seems to have bumped her head!” the hotel proprietor began with professional tact.

In one gasping breath the women started to explain their version of the accident.

Barton, as dumb as the father, carried the girl directly to the bed and put her down softly, half lying, half sitting, among the great pile of night-crumpled pillows.  Some one threw a blanket over her.  And above the top edge of that blanket nothing of her showed except the grotesquely twisted turban, the whole of one white eyelid, the half of the other, and just that single persistent trickle of red.  Raspishly at that moment the clock on the mantelpiece choked out the hour of three.  Already Dawn was more than half a hint in the sky, and in the ghastly mixture of real and artificial light the girl’s doom looked already sealed.

Then very suddenly she opened her eyes and stared around.

“Eve!” gasped her father, “what have you been doing?”

Vaguely the troubled eyes closed, and then opened again.  “I was—­trying—­to show people—­that I was a—­rose,” mumbled little Eve Edgarton.