“Why, I believe it’s going to clear off, after all,” he exclaimed.  “Sam predicted it, before breakfast.  He pretends to be able to tell by the flowers.  After a while I must show you my flowers, Miss Marcy, and what Dalton Street can do by way of a garden—­Mr. Hodder could hardly believe it, even when he saw it.”  Thus he went on, the tips of his fingers pressed together, his head bent forward in familiar attitude, his face lighted, speaking naturally of trivial things that seemed to suggest themselves; and careful, with exquisite tact that did not betray itself, to address both.  A passing automobile startled her with the blast of its horn.  “I’m afraid I shall never get accustomed to them,” he lamented.  “At first I used to be thankful there were no trolley cars on this street, but I believe the automobiles are worse.”

A figure flitted through the hall and into the room, which Hodder recognized as Miss Grower’s.  She reminded him of a flying shuttle across the warp of Mr. Bentley’s threads, weaving them together; swift, sure, yet never hurried or flustered.  One glance at the speechless woman seemed to suffice her for a knowledge of the situation.

“Mr. Hodder has brought us a new friend and neighbour, Sally,—­Miss Kate Marcy.  She is to have a room near us, that we may see her often.”

Hodder watched Miss Grower’s procedure with a breathless interest.

“Why, Mrs. McQuillen has a room—­across the street, you know, Mr. Bentley.”

Sally perched herself on the edge of the armchair and laid her hand lightly on Kate Marcy’s.

Even Sally Grover was powerless to prevent the inevitable, and the touch of her hand seemed the signal for the release of the pent-up forces.  The worn body, the worn nerves, the weakened will gave way, and Kate Marcy burst into a paroxysm of weeping that gradually became automatic, convulsive, like a child’s.  There was no damming this torrent, once released.  Kindness, disinterested friendship, was the one unbearable thing.

“We must bring her upstairs,” said Sally Grover, quietly, “she’s going to pieces.”

Hodder helping, they fairly carried her up the flight, and laid her on Sally Grover’s own bed.

That afternoon she was taken to Mrs. McQuillen’s.

The fiends are not easily cheated.  And during the nights and days that followed even Sally Grower, whose slight frame was tireless, whose stoicism was amazing, came out of the sick room with a white face and compressed lips.  Tossing on the mattress, Kate Marcy enacted over again incident after incident of her past life, events natural to an existence which had been largely devoid of self-pity, but which now, clearly enough, tested the extreme limits of suffering.  Once more, in her visions, she walked the streets, wearily measuring the dark, empty blocks, footsore, into the smaller hours of the night; slyly, insinuatingly, pathetically offering herself—­all she possessed—­to the hovering beasts of prey.  And even these rejected her, with gibes, with obscene jests that sprang to her lips and brought a shudder to those who heard.