I should have called her a girl, for she could not have been more than twenty years of age.  Her hair was of a fair brown, the features modelled splendidly, the head poised upon a flawless throat that gleamed white beneath a neckpiece of magnificent sable.

She carried a sable muff, too, and under these furs was a dress of unstylish fashion and cut that contrasted curiously with them.  I thought that those loose sleeves had passed away before the nineteenth century died.  In one hand she carried a bag, into which she was stuffing a large roll of bills.

As she stepped down to the street the dog leaped up at her.  A hand fell caressingly upon the creature’s head, and I knew that she had one servant who would be faithful unto death.

She passed so close to me that her dress brushed my overcoat, and for an instant her eyes met mine.  There was a look in them that startled me—­terror and helplessness, as though she had suffered some benumbing shock which made her actions more automatic than conscious.

This was no woman of the class that one might expect to find in Daly’s.  There was innocence in the face and in the throat, uplifted, as one sees it in young girls.

I was bewildered.  What was a girl like that doing in Daly’s at half past twelve in the morning?

She began walking slowly and rather aimlessly, it seemed to me, along the street in the direction of Sixth Avenue.  My curiosity was unbounded.  I followed her at a decent interval to see what she was going to do.  But she did not seem to know.

The girl looked as if she had stepped out of a cloister into an unknown world, and the dog added to the strangeness of the picture.

The street loafers stared after her, and two men began walking abreast of her on the other side of the road.  I followed more closely.

As she stood upon the curb on the east side of Sixth Avenue I saw her glance timidly up and down before venturing to cross.  There was little traffic, and the cars were running at wide intervals, but it was quite half a minute before she summoned resolution to plunge beneath the structure of the elevated railroad.  When she had reached the other side she stood still again before continuing westward.

The two men crossed the street and planted themselves behind her.  They were speaking in a tongue that sounded like French, and one had a patch over his eye.  A taxicab was crawling up behind them.  I was sure that they were in pursuit of her.

The four of us were almost abreast in the middle of the long block between Sixth and Seventh Avenues.  We were passing a dead wall, and the street was almost empty.

Suddenly the man with the patch turned on me, lowered his head, and butted me off my feet.  I fell into the roadway, and at that instant the second fellow grasped the girl by the arm and the taxicab whirled up and stopped.

The girl’s assailants seemed to be trying to force her into the cab.  One caught at her arm, the other seized her waist.  The bag flew open, scattering a shower of gold pieces upon the pavement.