to Margarita--so much that she could not very well attend to it.
At last he gave her a large grey veil and commanded her to wrap her
head in it, and he would look after her when they got to New York. But
when they did get to New York she eluded him and asked the way to
Broadway, and then she met Roger. So, as the young man had said, there
were friends on Broadway. But there were none in the town from which
she took the ticket and she had no idea what its name was. Hester
never mentioned it. She did not believe it had a name.

All this as the cab rested by the kerbstone. It was perfectly obvious
that she was speaking the truth. They had patronised this particular
driver long enough, anyway, and Roger paid him liberally and led
Margarita into the draggled, dusty station; the new one was not then
built. Seated beside her in a relatively dim corner he tried to
formulate some plan, but the absurd emptiness of the situation baffled
even his practical good sense. How could he take this girl to a town
that neither he nor she knew the name of? How, on the other hand,
could he fling such a projectile as Margarita into any respectable
hotel? What would she do--or say? True, he might possibly have
presented her as his sister and kept her sternly in view during every
possible moment, but she was not sufficiently well dressed to be his
sister. And his overcoat was buttoned suspiciously high. Was he to
stroll out of the waiting-room and leave her abandoned, like some
undesirable kitten, in the corner? The idea was ludicrous: she must be
taken care of. Had she thrust herself upon him, enticed him,
challenged him? Assuredly not; moved by some completely inexplicable
influence, utterly alien to himself, his birth, his training, he had
deliberately and persistently questioned her, prolonged a trifling
encounter unjustifiably, whirled her away, literally; and now that he
had found no suitable place of deposit it was incredible that he
should deliver this extraordinary and self-assumed charge to civil
authority. It would have been almost as well to lead her back to
Broadway, he told himself sternly. The most exotic foreigner would
have found herself in better case, it occurred to him, for
interpreters of one sort or another can always be found. But Margarita
seemed foreign to this planet, very nearly. What should be said of a
person who lived on a nameless shore, served by Hester Prynne and
Caliban? Who scooped hundreds--perhaps thousands-