d from the very dregs of a grief too great to be borne.

He looked about him, his eyes and ears searching for further explanation
of this. He had it. There was a door set in the cross-wall of his
room--a door bolted and nailed up. It had a transom over it and against
the dirty glass of the transom a light was reflected, and through the
door and the transom the sound came. The person in trouble, whoever it
might be, was in that next room--and that person was a woman and she was
in dire distress. There was a compelling note in her sobbing.

Undecided, Major Stone stood a minute rubbing his nose pensively with a
small forefinger; then the resolution to act fastened upon him. He
slipped his coat back on, smoothed down his thin mane of reddish gray
hair with his hands, stepped out into the hall and rapped delicately
with a knuckled finger upon the door of the next room. There was no
answer, so he rapped a little harder; and at that a sob checked itself
and broke off chokingly in the throat that uttered it. From within a
voice came. It was a shaken, tear-drained voice--flat and uncultivated.

"Who's there?" The major cleared his throat. "Is it a woman--or a man?"
demanded the unseen speaker without waiting for an answer to the first
question.

"It is a gentleman," began the major--"a gentleman who----"

"Come on in!" she bade him--"the door ain't latched."

And at that the major turned the knob and looked into a room that was
practically a counterpart of his own, except that, instead of a trunk, a
cheap imitation-leather suitcase stood upright on the floor, its sides
bulging and strained from over-packing. Upon the bed, fully dressed,
was stretched a woman--or, rather, a girl. Her head was just rising from
the crumpled pillow and her eyes, red-rimmed and widely distended,
stared full into his.

What she saw, as she sat up, was a short, elderly man with a solicitous,
gentle face; the coat sleeves were turned back off his wrists and his
linen shirt jutted out between the unfastened upper buttons and
buttonholes of his waistcoat. What the major saw was a girl of perhaps
twenty or maybe twenty-two--in her present state it was hard to
guess--with hunched-in shoulders and dyed, stringy hair falling in a
streaky disarray down over her face like unraveled hemp.

It was her face that told her story. Upon the drawn cheeks and the
drooped, woful lips there was no dabbing of cosmetics now; the
professional smile, painted, pitiabl