"We can't stand here," the young man was saying.

She tried to speak about the ten dollars. She simply could not
force out the words. With brain in a whirl, with blood beating
suffocatingly into her throat and lungs, but giving no outward
sign of agitation, she entered the gate. There was a low,
old-fashioned porch along the side of the house, with an awning
curiously placed at the end toward the street. When they
ascended the steps under the awning, they were screened from the
street. The young man pulled a knob. A bell within tinkled
faintly; Susan started, shivered. But the young man, looking
straight at the door, did not see. A colored girl with a
pleasant, welcoming face opened, stood aside for them to enter.
He went straight up the stairs directly ahead, and Susan
followed. At the threshold the trembling girl looked round in
terror. She expected to see a place like that foul, close little
farm bedroom--for it seemed to her that at such times men must
seek some dreadful place--vile, dim, fitting. She was in a
small, attractively furnished room, with a bow window looking
upon the yard and the street. The furniture reminded her of her
own room at her uncle's in Sutherland, except that the brass bed
was far finer. He closed the door and locked it.

As he advanced toward her he said: "_What_ are you seeing? Please
don't look like that." Persuasively, "You weren't thinking of
me--were you?"

"No--Oh, no," replied she, passing her hand over her eyes to try
to drive away the vision of Ferguson.

"You look as if you expected to be murdered. Do you want to go?"

She forced herself to seem calm. "What a coward I am!" she said
to herself. "If I could only die for him, instead of this. But
I can't. And I _must_ get money for him."

To the young man she said: "No. I--I--want to stay."

Late in the afternoon, when they were once more in the street,
he said. "I'd ask you to go to dinner with me, but I haven't
enough money."

She stopped short. An awful look came into her face.

"Don't be alarmed," cried he, hurried and nervous, and blushing
furiously. "I put the--the present for you in that funny little
bundle of yours, under one of the folds of the nightgown or
whatever it is you've got wrapped on the outside. I didn't like
to hand it to you. I've a feeling somehow that you're not
regularly--that kind."

"Was it--ten dollars?" she said, and for all he could see she
was absolutely ca