“She died an hour ago,” said the cabman, in the same monotonous voice. “I thought mabbe you'd look after the baby girl for a bit, Mrs. Veniza--you and Paul.” “Of course!” said the woman in a choked voice. “I wanted to before, but--but your wife wouldn't let the wee mite out of her sight.” “She's dead now,” said the cabman. “An hour ago.” Paul Veniza, the pawnbroker, crossed to the cabman's side, and, placing his hands on the other's shoulders, drew the man down into a chair. “Hawkins,” he said slowly, “we're getting on in years, fifty each of us, and we've known each other for a good many of those fifty.” He cleared his throat. “You've made a mess of things, Hawkins.” The woman, holding the baby, started suddenly forward, a red flush dyeing her cheeks. “Paul!” she cried out sharply. “How can you be so cruel at such an hour as this?” The pawnbroker shook his head. He had moved to the back of the cabman's chair. Tall, slight, grave and kindly-faced, with high forehead and the dark hair beginning to silver at the temples, there seemed something almost esthetic about the man. “It is _the_ hour,” he said deliberately; “the one hour in which I must speak plainly to my old friend, the one hour that has come into his life which may mean everything to him.” His right hand slipped from the cabman's shoulder and started, tentatively, hesitantly, toward a bulge in the cabman's coat pocket--but was drawn back again, and found its place once more on the cabman's shoulder. “I was afraid, Hawkins, when you married the young wife. I was afraid of your curse.” The cabman's elbows were on the table; he had sunk his chin in his hands. His blue eyes, out of a wrinkled face of wind-beaten tan, roved around the little room, and rested finally on the bundle in the woman's arms. “That's finished now,” he said dully. “I pray God it is,” said Paul Veniza earnestly; “but you said that before--when you married the young wife.” “It's finished now--so help me, God!” The cabman's lips scarcely moved. He stared straight in front of him. There was silence in the little, plainly furnished room for a moment; then the pawnbroker spoke again: “I was born here in New York, you know, after my parents came from Italy. There was no money, nothing--only misery. I remember. It is like that, Hawkins, isn't it, where you have just come from, and where you have left the young wife?” “Paul!” his wife cried out again. “How can you say such things? It--it is not like you!” Her lips quivered. She burst into tears, and buried her face in the little bundle she snuggled to her breast. The cabman seemed curiously unmoved--as though dazed, almost detached from his immediate surroundings. He said nothing. The pawnbroker's hands still rested on the cabman's shoulders, a strange gentleness in his touch that sought somehow, it seemed, to offer sympathy for his own merciless words.