he felt sleepy and dull after an aggravating
doze or two on the way, and had almost forgotten the red-haired child
with the vivid blue eyes, until, to his astonishment, he saw her alone
parleying with a _douanier_, over two great boxes, for one of which
there seemed to be no key.

"Those selfish people of hers have left her to do all the work," he said
to himself indignantly, and as she appeared to be having some difficulty
with the official, he went to ask if he could help.

"Thank you, it's all right now," she said. "The key of my biggest box is
mislaid, but luckily I've got the man to believe me when I say there's
nothing in it except clothes, just the same as in the other. Still it
would be very, very kind if you wouldn't mind seeing me to a cab. That
is, if it's no bother."

Stephen assured her that he would be delighted.

"Have your people engaged the cab already," he wanted to know, "or are
they waiting in this room for you?"

"I haven't any people," she answered. "I'm all by myself."

This was another surprise, and it was as much as Stephen could do not to
blame her family audibly for allowing the child to travel alone, at
night too. The thing seemed monstrous.

He took her into the court-yard, where the cabs stood, and engaged two,
one for the girl, and one for her large luggage.

"You have rooms already taken at an hotel, I hope?" he asked.

"I'm going to a boarding-house--a _pension_, I mean," explained the
girl. "But it's all right. They know I'm coming. I do thank you for
everything."

Seated in the cab, she held out her hand in a glove which had been
cleaned, and showed mended fingers. Stephen shook the small hand
gravely, and for the second time they bade each other good-bye.

In the cold grey light of a rainy dawn, which would have suited few
women as a background, especially after a night journey, the girl's face
looked pearly, and Stephen saw that her lashes, darker at the roots,
were bright golden at the turned-up ends.

It seemed to him that this pretty child, alone in the greyness and rain
of the big foreign city, was like a spring flower thrown carelessly into
a river to float with the stream. He felt an impulse of protection, and
it went against his instincts to let her drive about Paris unprotected,
while night had hardly yielded to morning. But he could not offer to go
with her. He was interested, as any man of flesh and blood must be
interested, in the fate of an innocent and char