ed."

If this sharpened her suspicions, it sharpened her fear also. She put
one foot on the lowest step of the stairs.

"Be off with you, Mr. Donnegally, or whatever your outlandish name is.
You'll get nothing here. What brings you--"

A door closed and a footstep sounded lightly on the floor above. And
Donnegan, already alert in the strange atmosphere of this house, gave
back a pace so as to get an honest wall behind him. He noted that the
step was quick and small, and preparing himself to meet a wisp of
manhood--which, for that matter, was the type he was most inclined to
fear--Donnegan kept a corner glance upon the old woman at the foot of
the stairs and steadily surveyed the shadows at the head of the rise.

Out of that darkness a foot slipped; not even a boy's foot--a very
child's. The shock of it made Donnegan relax his caution for an instant,
and in that instant she came into the reach of the light. It was a
wretched light at best, for it came from a lamp with smoky chimney
which the old hag carried, and at the raising and lowering of her hand
the flame jumped and died in the throat of the chimney and set the hall
awash with shadows. Falling away to a point of yellow, the lamp allowed
the hall to assume a certain indefinite dignity of height and breadth
and calm proportions; but when the flame rose Donnegan could see the
broken balusters of the balustrade, the carpet, faded past any design
and worn to rattiness, wall paper which had rotted or dried away and
hung in crisp tatters here and there, and on the ceiling an irregular
patch from which the plaster had fallen and exposed the lathwork. But at
the coming of the girl the old woman had turned, and as she did the
flame tossed up in the lamp and Donnegan could see the newcomer
distinctly.

Once before his heart had risen as it rose now. It had been the fag end
of a long party, and Donnegan, rousing from a drunken sleep, staggered
to the window. Leaning there to get the freshness of the night air
against his hot face, he had looked up, and saw the white face of the
moon going up the sky; and a sudden sense of the blackness and loathing
against the city had come upon Donnegan, and the murky color of his own
life; and when he turned away from the window he was sober. And so it
was that he now stared up at the girl. At her breast she held a cloak
together with one hand and the other hand touched the railing of the
stairs. He saw one foot suspended for the next s