account for her being late in keeping the
appointment so that she had arrived just in time, say, to see Danglar
dash wildly in pursuit of a woman who had jumped into the car that she
was supposed to take!

The garret! The garret again--and Gypsy Nan! Her surroundings seemed
to become a blank to her; her actions to be prompted by some purely
mechanical sense. She was conscious only that finally, after an
interminable time, she was in New York again; and after that, long,
long after that, dressed as Gypsy Nan, she was stumbling up the dark,
ladder-like steps to the attic.

How her footsteps dragged! She opened the door, staggered inside, locked
the door again, and staggered toward the cot, and dropped upon it; and
the gray dawn came in with niggardly light through the grimy little
window panes, as though timorously inquisitive of this shawled and
dissolute figure prone and motionless, this figure who in other dawns
had found neither sleep nor rest--this figure who lay there now as one
dead.

XVIII. THE OLD SHED

Rhoda Gray opened her eyes, and, from the cot upon which she lay, stared
with drowsy curiosity around the garret--and in another instant was
sitting bolt upright, alert and tense, as the full flood of memory swept
upon her.

There was still a meager light creeping in through the small, grimy
window panes, but it was the light of waning day. She must have slept,
then, all through the morning and the afternoon, slept the dead, heavy
sleep of exhaustion from the moment she had flung herself down here a
few hours before daybreak.

She rose impulsively to her feet. It was strange that she had not been
disturbed, that no one had come to the garret! The recollection of the
events of the night before were crowding themselves upon her now. In
view of last night, in view of her failure to keep that appointment in
the role of Danglar's wife, it was very strange indeed that she had been
left undisturbed!

Subconsciously she was aware that she was hungry, that it was long since
she had eaten, and, almost mechanically, she prepared herself something
now from the store the garret possessed; but, even as she ate, her mind
was far from thoughts of food. From the first night she had come here
and self-preservation had thrust this miserable role of Gypsy Nan upon
her, from that first night and from the following night when, to save
the Sparrow, she had been whirled into the vortex of the gang's criminal
activities, h