ck, without a pillow. Then turning to his hand-bag,
he opened it and produced a small, leather-bound flask of brandy; a
little of which would go far toward shattering her syncope, he fancied.

It did, in fact; a few drops between her half-parted lips, and she came
to with disconcerting rapidity, opening dazed eyes in the middle of a
spasm of coughing. He stepped back, stoppering the flask.

"That's better," he said pleasantly. "Now lie still while I fetch you a
drink of water."

As he turned to the wash-stand his foot struck the tumbler she had
dropped. He stopped short, frowning down at the great, staring, wet,
yellow stain on the dingy and threadbare carpet. Together with this
discovery he got a whiff of an acrid-sweet effluvium that spelled
"_Oxalic Acid--Poison_" as unmistakably as did the druggist's label on
the empty packet on the wash-stand....

In another moment he was back at the bedside with a clean glass of
water, which he offered to the girl's lips, passing his arm beneath her
shoulders and lifting her head so that she might drink.

She emptied the glass thirstily.

"Look here," he said almost roughly under the lash of this new
fear--"you didn't really drink any of that stuff, did you?"

Her eyes met his with a look of negation clouded by fear and
bewilderment. Then she turned her head away. Dragging a pillow beneath
it, he let her down again.

"Good," he said in accents meant to be enheartening; "you'll be all
right in a moment or two."

Her colourless lips moved in a whisper he had to bend close to
distinguish.

"Please...."

"Yes?"

"Please don't ... call anybody...."

"I won't. Don't worry."

The lids quivered down over her eyes, and her mouth was wrung with
anguish. He stared, perplexed. He wanted to go away quickly, but
couldn't gain his own consent to do so. She was in no condition to be
left alone, this delicate and fragile child, defenceless and beset. It
wasn't hard to conjecture the hell of suffering she must have endured
before coming to a pass of such desperation. There were dull blue
shadows beneath eyes red with weeping, a forlorn twist to her thin,
bloodless lips, a pinched look of wretchedness like a glaze over her
unhappy face, that told too plain a story. A strange girl, to find in a
plight like hers, he thought: not pretty, but quite unusual: delicate,
sensitive, high-strung, bred to the finer things of life--this last was
self-evident in the fine simplicity of her seve