“No,” he said, “it wasn’t.”  He bowed his head, and presently, when he raised it again, he caught something in her look that puzzled and disturbed him—­an element of adoration.

“You’re white through and through,” she said, slowly and distinctly.

And he knew not how to protest.

“I’ll tell you something,” she went on, as one who has made a discovery.  “I liked you the first time you came in here—­that night—­when you wanted me to be friends; well, there was something that seemed to make it impossible then.  I felt it, if you didn’t.”  She groped for words.  “I can’t explain what it was, but now it’s gone.  You’re different.  I think a lot more of you.  Maybe it’s because of what you did at Harrod’s, sitting down with me and giving me supper when I was so hungry, and the champagne.  You weren’t ashamed of me.”

“Good God, why should I have been!” he exclaimed.

“You!  Why shouldn’t you?” she cried fiercely.

“There’s hardly a man in that place that wouldn’t have been.  They all know me by sight—­and some of ’em better.  You didn’t see ’em grinning when I came up to you, but I did.  My God—­it’s awful—­it’s awful I....”  She burst into violent weeping, long deferred.

He took her hand in his, and did not speak, waiting for the fit to spend itself . . . .  And after a while the convulsive shudders that shook her gradually ceased.

“You must trust me,” he said.  “The first thing tomorrow I’m going to make arrangements for you to get out of these rooms.  You can’t stay here any longer.”

“That’s sure,” she answered, trying to smile.  “I’m broke.  I even owe the co—­the policeman.”

“The policeman!”

“He has to turn it in to Tom Beatty and the politicians”

Beatty!  Where had he heard the name?  Suddenly it came to him that Beatty was the city boss, who had been eulogized by Mr. Plimpton!

“I have some good friends who will be glad to help you to get work—­and until you do get work.  You will have to fight—­but we all have to fight.  Will you try?”

“Sure, I’ll try,” she answered, in a low voice.

Her very tone of submission troubled him.  And he had a feeling that, if he had demanded, she would have acquiesced in anything.

“We’ll talk it over to-morrow,” he went on, clinging to his note of optimism.  “We’ll find out what you can do easiest, to begin with.”

“I might give music lessons,” she suggested.

The remark increased his uneasiness, for he recognized in it a sure symptom of disease—­a relapse into what might almost have been called levity, blindness to the supreme tragedy of her life which but a moment before had shaken and appalled her.  He shook his head bravely.

“I’m afraid that wouldn’t do—­at first.”

She rose and went into the other room, returning in a few moments with a work basket, from which she drew a soiled and unfinished piece of embroidery.