“Drive on; don’t wait for me.  I am going to see my friend home,” she said calmly enough.

The girl with the red parasol seemed to gasp at the word “friend,” when Virginia spoke it.  She did not say anything.

The other girls seemed speechless.

“Go on.  I cannot go back with you,” said Virginia.  The driver started the horses slowly.  One of the girls leaned a little out of the carriage.

“Can’t we—­that is—­do you want our help?  Couldn’t you—­”

“No, no!” exclaimed Virginia.  “You cannot be of any help to me.”

The carriage moved on and Virginia was alone with her charge.  She looked up and around.  Many faces in the crowd were sympathetic.  They were not all cruel or brutal.  The Holy Spirit had softened a good deal of the Rectangle.

“Where does she live?” asked Virginia.

No one answered.  It occurred to Virginia afterward when she had time to think it over, that the Rectangle showed a delicacy in its sad silence that would have done credit to the boulevard.  For the first time it flashed across her that the immortal being who was flung like wreckage upon the shore of this early hell called the saloon, had no place that could be called home.  The girl suddenly wrenched her arm from Virginia’s grasp.  In doing so she nearly threw Virginia down.

“You shall not touch me!  Leave me!  Let me go to hell!  That’s where I belong!  The devil is waiting for me.  See him!” she exclaimed hoarsely.  She turned and pointed with a shaking finger at the saloon-keeper.  The crowd laughed.  Virginia stepped up to her and put her arm about her.

“Loreen,” she said firmly, “come with me.  You do not belong to hell.  You belong to Jesus and He will save you.  Come.”

The girl suddenly burst into tears.  She was only partly sobered by the shock of meeting Virginia.

Virginia looked around again.  “Where does Mr. Gray live?” she asked.  She knew that the evangelist boarded somewhere near the tent.  A number of voices gave the direction.

“Come, Loreen, I want you to go with me to Mr. Gray’s,” she said, still keeping her hold of the swaying, trembling creature who moaned and sobbed and now clung to her as firmly as before she had repulsed her.

So the two moved on through the Rectangle toward the evangelist’s lodging place.  The sight seemed to impress the Rectangle seriously.  It never took itself seriously when it was drunk, but this was different.  The fact that one of the richest, most beautifully-dressed girls in all Raymond was taking care of one of the Rectangle’s most noted characters, who reeled along under the influence of liquor, was a fact astounding enough to throw more or less dignity and importance about Loreen herself.  The event of Loreen’s stumbling through the gutter dead-drunk always made the Rectangle laugh and jest.  But Loreen staggering along with a young lady from the society circles uptown supporting her, was another thing.  The Rectangle viewed it with soberness and more or less wondering admiration.