upted Pete, anticipating.

The girl seemed to have a struggle with herself. She was apparently
bewildered and could not find speech. Finally she asked in a low
voice: "But where kin I go?"

The question exasperated Pete beyond the powers of endurance. It was a
direct attempt to give him some responsibility in a matter that did not
concern him. In his indignation he volunteered information.

"Oh, go teh hell," cried he. He slammed the door furiously and
returned, with an air of relief, to his respectability.

Maggie went away.

She wandered aimlessly for several blocks. She stopped once and asked
aloud a question of herself: "Who?"

A man who was passing near her shoulder, humorously took the
questioning word as intended for him.

"Eh? What? Who? Nobody! I didn't say anything," he laughingly said,
and continued his way.

Soon the girl discovered that if she walked with such apparent
aimlessness, some men looked at her with calculating eyes. She
quickened her step, frightened. As a protection, she adopted a
demeanor of intentness as if going somewhere.

After a time she left rattling avenues and passed between rows of
houses with sternness and stolidity stamped upon their features. She
hung her head for she felt their eyes grimly upon her.

Suddenly she came upon a stout gentleman in a silk hat and a chaste
black coat, whose decorous row of buttons reached from his chin to his
knees. The girl had heard of the Grace of God and she decided to
approach this man.

His beaming, chubby face was a picture of benevolence and
kind-heartedness. His eyes shone good-will.

But as the girl timidly accosted him, he gave a convulsive movement and
saved his respectability by a vigorous side-step. He did not risk it
to save a soul. For how was he to know that there was a soul before
him that needed saving?

Chapter XVII

Upon a wet evening, several months after the last chapter, two
interminable rows of cars, pulled by slipping horses, jangled along a
prominent side-street. A dozen cabs, with coat-enshrouded drivers,
clattered to and fro. Electric lights, whirring softly, shed a blurred
radiance. A flower dealer, his feet tapping impatiently, his nose and
his wares glistening with rain-drops, stood behind an array of roses
and chrysanthemums. Two or three theatres emptied a crowd upon the
storm-swept pavements. Men pulled their hats over their eyebrows and
raised their collars to their ears. W