ands away. "I wasn't hurt. I--I
slipped and fell and struck my head on the pavement. Don't let
anybody telephone. I can go alone. Please--please let me go! I
must go! I can't stay here."

"But you mustn't go alone." I turned to Selwyn. "Mr. Thorne will go
with you. Do you live far from here?"

"Not very. It's close enough for me to go by myself. He mustn't go
with me." The words came stumblingly, and again I saw the quick,
frightened look she gave Selwyn, a look in which was indecision and
appeal, as well as fear, and I saw, too, that his face flushed as he
turned away.

With quick movement the girl got up. From her throat came a sound
hysterical and choking, and, putting her hand to it, she looked first
at me and then at Mrs. Mundy, but at Selwyn she did not look again.
"I'm going. Thank you for letting me come in." Blindly she
staggered to the door, her hands outstretched as if to feel what she
could not see. At it she turned and in her face was that which keeps
me awake at night, which haunts and hurts and seems to be crying to
me to do something which I know not how to do.

"You poor child!" I started toward her. "You must not go alone."
But before I could reach her she fell in a heap at the door, and as
one dead she lay limp and white and piteously pretty on the floor.

CHAPTER VI

I don't understand Mrs. Mundy. She acts so queerly about the girl we
found on the street last night. She put her to bed, after she had
recovered from her fainting spell, on a cot in the room next to her
own, but this morning she told me the girl had gone, and would tell
me nothing else.

When Selwyn, who had picked her up and laid her on the couch, asked
if he should not get a doctor, Mrs. Mundy had said no, and said it so
positively that he offered to do nothing else. And then she thanked
him and told him good night in such a way he understood it was best
he Should go.

At the front door he called me. With his back to it he held out his
hands, took mine in his, crushed them in clasp so close they hurt.

"Danny," he said, "why do you torment me so? You don't know what
you're doing, living where such things are possible as have taken
place tonight; where any time you may be--"

His voice broke, and in amazement I looked at him. Horror and fear
were in his face.

"Do you think it is so awful a thing to see a poor little creature
who has been hurt and needs help?" I drew my hands away. "You ta