some innocent thing which I was
powerless to aid, and strode toward the door.

Then I heard a little cry, and saw her come flying down the great hall,
leaving him standing amazedly in the archway of the palm alcove.

She passed me at the door, her face vividly white, went out into the
street, like a dove from the trap at a shooting tournament, and sprang
lightly upon a passing street-car. I could act now, and I would see her
to a place of safety; so I, too, swung on by the rail of the rear car.
She never once turned her face; but I saw Sir John come to the door of
the restaurant and look both ways for her, and as he stood perplexed and
alarmed, our train turned the curve at the next corner, we were swept
off toward the South Side, and the dark young man passed, as I supposed,
"into my dreams forever." I made my way forward a few seats and saw her
sitting there with her head bowed upon the back of the seat in front of
her. I bitterly wished that he, if he had a heart, might see her there,
bruised in spirit, her little ignorant white soul, searching itself for
smutches of the uncleanness it feared. I wished that Alice might be
there to go to her and comfort her without a word. I paid her fare, and
the conductor seemed to understand that she was not to be disturbed. A
drunken man in rough clothes came into the car, walked forward and
looked at her a moment, and as I was about to go to him and make him sit
elsewhere, he turned away and came back to the rear, as if he had some
sort of maudlin realization that the front of the train was sacred
ground.

At last she looked about, signalled for the car to stop, and alighted. I
followed, rather suspecting that she did not know her way. She walked
steadily on, however, to a big, dark house with a vine-covered porch,
close to the sidewalk. A stout man, coatless, and in a white shirt,
stood at the gate. He wore a slouch hat, and I knew him, even in that
dim light, for a farmer. She stopped for a moment, and without a word,
sprang into his arms.

"Wal, little gal, ain't yeh out purty late?" I heard him say, as I
walked past. "Didn't expect yer dad to see yeh, did yeh? Why, yeh ain't
a-cryin', be yeh?"

"O pa! O pa!" was all I heard her say; but it was enough. I walked to
the corner, and sat down on the curbstone, dead tired, but happy. In a
little while I went back toward the street-car line, and as I passed the
vine-clad porch, heard the farmer's bass voice, and stopped to list