I heard the chair whispering, whispering messages beyond the little reach of human understanding. Then the beggar of ghosts fell back, and the bed creaked and shook. I knew what made it creak and shake. Chairs that whisper have no balm for that misery. Two of us lay still and wakeful through the rest of that night. In the morning we faced each other pallidly. “Did you hear me in the night?” asked my host. “Yes.” “Then I'm going to tell you the rest, for I think I haven't much longer time to tell anything.” “Oh, nonsense!” I protested; but it was lip speech only, and he smiled at the pretense. “Of course, nonsense, if you like. But I'll go, shriven of _that_ secret. The wicker chair is where She used to sit.” “That much I gathered.” “How can I describe Her to you? How can I make you understand as you would if you'd seen Her?” “Perhaps I have.” “When? Where?” “Sitting with you on a bench in the Square the week the lilacs bloomed. She looked afraid.” “She was. A brute of a foreman had insulted her. So she lost her job as a feather finisher--did you see her beautiful hands?--and she could find no other, and there was nobody in the world for her to turn to. Down below her last dollar, and twenty years old, and lovely. There's terror enough in that, isn't there?” My mind went back to certain black-and-scarlet tragedies which Our Square makes brave pretense of having forgotten; tragedies of its unforgotten daughters. Terror enough, indeed! “Was she some one you knew?” No; she was not some one whom the Gnome knew. How to get to know her and help her (for help was his one, all-effacing, loyal purpose from the first moment he looked into her face); there was the heart of the problem. At any moment she might pass on, out of reach of his aid.