come
up-stairs because she, too, was wondering if there was something she
could do. Kitty is no longer the child she once was. She is going,
some day, to be a brave and big and splendid woman. At the window she
sat down, and as though she were not in the room Etta turned toward me.

"You said just now you wanted to help. Wanting won't do that!" She
snapped her fingers. "You've got to stop wanting and will to do
something. Men laugh at the laws men make, but we don't blame men like
we blame women who let their men be bad and then smile on them, marry
them, and pretend they do not know. They do not want to know. If you
made men pay the price you make us pay, the world would be a safer
place to live in. Men don't do what women won't stand for."

Kitty leaned forward, and Etta, with twisting hands, looked at her and
then at Mrs. Mundy and then at me, and in her eyes was piteous appeal.
"There's no chance for me, but I've got a little baby girl. What's
going to become of her? In God's name, can't you do something to make
good women understand? Make them know the awfulness--awfulness--"

Again the room grew still and presently, with dragging steps, Etta
turned toward the door. Quickly I followed her. She must not go. I
had said nothing, gotten nowhere, and there was much that must be said
that something might be done. To have her leave without some plan to
work toward would be loss of time. She was but one of thousands of
bits of human wreckage, in danger herself and of danger to others, and
somebody must do something for her. I put my hand on her shoulder to
draw her back and as I did so the door, half ajar, opened more widely.
Motionless, and as one transfixed, she stared at it wide-eyed, and into
her face crept the pallor of death.

Selwyn and Harrie were standing in the doorway.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Stumbling back as if struck, Harrie leaned against the door-frame,
and the hat in his hand dropped to the floor. Selwyn, too, for a
half-minute drew back, then he came inside and spoke to Etta, and to
me, and to Mrs. Mundy, and to Kitty. Pushing a chair close to the
fire, he took Harrie by the arm and led him to it.

"Sit down," he said, quietly. "You'll be better in a minute."

Harrie had given Etta no sign of recognition, but the horror in his
once-handsome face, now white and drawn, told of his shock at finding
her with me, and fear and recoil weakened him to the point of
faintness. In his