But the martyrdom was at an end.  A woman, hurrying past, bareheaded, was greeted by a cry of delight from Lolita, who released Hedrick and ran to her with outstretched arms.

“We were bringing her home, Mrs. Martin,” said Laura, reassuringly.  “She’s all right; nothing’s the matter except that her dress got torn.  We found her playing in our yard.”

“I thank you a thousand times, Miss Madison,” cried Lolita’s mother, and flutteringly plunged into a description of her anxiety, her search for Lolita, and concluded with renewed expressions of gratitude for the child’s safe return, an outpouring of thankfulness and joy wholly incomprehensible to Hedrick.

“Not at all,” said Laura cheerfully.  “Come, Hedrick.  We’ll go home by the street, I think.”  She touched his shoulder, and he went with her in stunned obedience.  He was not able to face the incredible thing that had happened to him:  he walked in a trance of horror.

“Poor little girl!” said Laura gently, with what seemed to her brother an indefensibly misplaced compassion.  “Usually they have her live in an institution for people afflicted as she is, but they brought her home for a visit last week, I believe.  Of course you didn’t understand, but I think you should have been more thoughtful.  Really, you shouldn’t have flirted with her.”

Hedrick stopped short.

“`_Flirted_’!” His voice was beginning to show symptoms of changing, this year; it rose to a falsetto wail, flickered and went out.

With the departure of Lolita in safety, what had seemed bizarre and piteous became obscured, and another aspect of the adventure was presented to Laura.  The sufferings of the arrogant are not wholly depressing to the spectator; and of arrogance Hedrick had ever been a master.  She began to shake; a convulsion took her, and suddenly she sat upon the curbstone without dignity, and laughed as he had never seen her.

A horrid distrust of her rose within him:  he began to realize in what plight he stood, what terrors o’erhung.

“Look here,” he said miserably, “are you—­you aren’t—­you don’t have to go and—­and talk about this, do you?”

“No, Hedrick,” she responded, rising and controlling herself somewhat.  “Not so long as you’re good.”

This was no reassuring answer.

“And politer to Cora,” she added.

Seemingly he heard the lash of a slave-whip crack in the air.  The future grew dark.

“I know you’ll try”—­she said; and the unhappy lad felt that her assurance was justified; but she had not concluded the sentence—­“darling little boy,” she capped it, choking slightly.

“No other little girl ever fell in love with you, did there, Hedrick?” she asked, and, receiving an incoherent but furious reply, she was again overcome, so that she must lean against the fence to recover.  “It seems—­so—­so curious,” she explained, gasping, “that the first one—­the—­the only one—­should be an—­a—­an——­” She was unable to continue.