It was her hand, white and slender, which reached shyly across the table, and touched mine, but her eyes alone made answer.

“That is all right,” I continued, my voice shaking.  “I understand how you feel.  Anyhow you ’ve made a new man out of me; maybe the stuff is n’t much, but there is a soul in it somewhere, and you ’ve given that soul something to get a grip on.  That was all I needed, just to get my teeth set.  But what about you?  This is no fit place for your kind—­you better go home to your mother.”

She shook her head with decision.

“Why not? is she hard?”

“Yes, she would be very hard with me.”

“Do you mean you would rather risk it here with—­with me, than go back, and face her?”

“Yes, even that,” she replied soberly.  “I have courage to fight it out here, but not there.  I know what it will mean if I go back—­reproaches, gossip, ostracism—­all the petty meannesses of a small town.  I loathe the very thought.  I am strong again, and I will not go.  It is between God and me, this decision; between God and me.”  She drooped her head, hiding her face upon her arms, her shoulders trembling.  “You—­you may despise me; you may think me the lowest of the low, but I—­I am going to stay here.”

I sat in silence, amazed, puzzled, gazing across at her, my face sober, my hands clinched.

“You actually mean you dare risk yourself here—­with me?”

“With your help; with you as a friend to talk to—­yes.”

I drew in my breath sharply, my forehead beaded with perspiration.

“But stop and think what I am,” I urged recklessly.  “A mere hobo.”

She raised her face, the flushed cheeks wet, the brown eyes glowing indignantly.

“No,” she said earnestly.  “You are not that; you are a man.”

For a long minute I did not answer, unable to determine what to do, how to act.  We had both finished our meal, and there was no excuse for lingering longer at the table.

“You will go with me, then?”

“Yes.”

I pushed back my chair, and she arose also, following me without question as I passed across to the door.  The cashier nodded to my good night, and I opened the door for her passage to the street.  The mist of the cloudy night had been blown away by an increasing breeze.  The air was warm, and the sky brightening in the east.  I glanced aside into her face, and led the way into a near-by park, the two of us trudging along a well-kept gravel path, until I discovered a bench hidden from observation amid surrounding shrubbery.

“I ’ve simply got to think this whole matter out,” I explained simply.  “It’s happened so unexpectedly.  I ’m stumped as to what had better be done.”

She remained standing, resting one hand on the back of the settee, a slender figure, neatly enough dressed, yet exhibiting evidence of her long night’s wandering.