As his fingers gripped the knob of Kitty’s outside office, shouts of “Happy New Year” rang out from a group of girls showering each other with snowballs.

“Pray God,” he said to himself, “that it be better than the one which is passing,” and stepped inside, to find Kitty in the kitchen.

“I have come to talk to you,” he said, speaking as a man whose strength is far spent.  “And if you do not mind, I will ask you to go into the sitting-room where we shall not be disturbed.  I have something to say to you.  Will you be alone?”

Kitty gave a start.  She knew at once that some new development had brought him to her at this hour.

“Yes, not a soul but me.  John and Bobby are up to the Grand Central, Mike’s bailed out, and yer tramp just come over from Otto’s.  They’re cleanin’ out the stables.  Is it some news ye have of her?”

“No—­nothing more than you know.  That must wait until to-morrow.  Nothing can be done to-night.”

She followed him into the room, dragged out a chair from against the wall, waited until he had slipped off his mackintosh, and then seated herself beside him.

“No,” he repeated, passing his hand across his eyes as if to shut out some haunting vision.  “There is no news.  She is in a cell, I suppose.  My God, what does it all mean!”

He paused, his head averted, staring straight ahead.

“You have been very kind to me, Mrs. Cleary, since I have been here—­you and your husband.  You may not have realized it, but I do not think I could have gone through the year without you—­you and little Masie.  I have come to the end now, where no one can help.  I have tried to carry it through alone.  I did not want to burden you with my troubles and—­ if I could prevent it, I would not now, but you will know it sooner or later, and I would rather tell you myself than have you hear it from strangers.”

He hesitated for an instant, looked into her eyes, and said slowly:  “The woman you picked up in the street and who is now in prison, is my wife, or was, until a year ago.”

Kitty neither moved nor spoke.  The announcement did not greatly surprise her.  What absorbed her was the new, hard lines in his face, her wonder being that such suffering should have fallen upon the head of a man who so little deserved it.

“And is that what has been breakin’ yer heart all these months ye lived with us?”

Felix moved uneasily.  “Yes.  There has been nothing else.”

“And she’s the same one ye’ve been a-trampin’ the streets to find?”

Felix bowed his head in assent.

“And ye kep’ all this from me?” she asked, as a mother might reproach her son.

“You could have done nothing.”

“I could have comforted ye.  That would have been somethin’.  Did she leave ye?”

Again Felix bowed his head in answer.  The spoken words would only add to his pain.

“For another man, was it?—­Yes, I see—­you twice her age, and she a chit of a child.  Ye can’t do much for that kind once they get their heads set—­no matter how good ye are to them.  And I suppose that when I found her that night on the door-steps and brought her into the kitchen, he’d turned her into the street.  That’s it, isn’t it?  And then she got to stealin’ to keep from starvin’?”