ate now."

Miss Forbes gave an exclamation of surprise.

"Why, I'm not going," she said.

"You must go! _I_ must go. You can't remain here alone."

Peabody spoke in the quick, assured tone that at the first had
convinced Miss Forbes his was a most masterful manner.

"Winthrop, too," he added, "wants you to go away."

Miss Forbes made no reply. But she looked at Peabody inquiringly,
steadily, as though she were puzzled as to his identity, as though he
had just been introduced to her. It made him uncomfortable.

"Are you coming?" he asked.

Her answer was a question.

"Are you going?"

"I am!" returned Peabody. He added sharply: "I must."

"Good-by," said Miss Forbes.

As he ran up the steps to the station of the elevated, it seemed to
Peabody that the tone of her "good-by" had been most unpleasant. It
was severe, disapproving. It had a final, fateful sound. He was
conscious of a feeling of self-dissatisfaction. In not seeing the
political importance of his not being mixed up with this accident,
Winthrop had been peculiarly obtuse, and Beatrice, unsympathetic.
Until he had cast his vote for Reform, he felt distinctly ill-used.

For a moment Beatrice Forbes sat in the car motionless, staring
unseeingly at the iron steps by which Peabody had disappeared. For a
few moments her brows were tightly drawn. Then, having apparently
quickly arrived at some conclusion, she opened the door of the car and
pushed into the crowd.

Winthrop received her most rudely.

"You mustn't come here!" he cried.

"I thought," she stammered, "you might want some one?"

"I told--" began Winthrop, and then stopped, and added--"to take you
away. Where is he?"

Miss Forbes flushed slightly.

"He's gone," she said.

In trying not to look at Winthrop, she saw the fallen figure,
motionless against the pillar, and with an exclamation, bent fearfully
toward it.

"Can I do anything?" she asked.

The crowd gave way for her, and with curious pleased faces, closed in
again eagerly. She afforded them a new interest.

A young man in the uniform of an ambulance surgeon was kneeling beside
the mud-stained figure, and a police officer was standing over both.
The ambulance surgeon touched lightly the matted hair from which the
blood escaped, stuck his finger in the eye of the prostrate man, and
then with his open hand slapped him across the face.

"Oh!" gasped Miss Forbes.

The young doctor heard her, and looking up, scow