His grave smile asked Beatrice to be charitable in her findings. The eyes she gave him were coldly hostile. She, too, had caught a glimpse of the haggard face in the shadows and she hardened her will against him. The bottom of his heart went out as he turned away. He knew Beatrice did not and would not understand. The girl was waiting where Clay had left her, crouched against a basement milliner's door under the shelter of the steps. She was wearing the overcoat he had flung around her. In its pallid despair her face was pitiable. A waterproofed policeman glanced suspiciously at them as he sloshed along the sidewalk in the splashing rain. "I--I've looked for you everywhere," moaned the girl. "It's been--awful." "I know, but it's goin' to be all right now, Kitty," he comforted. "You're goin' home with me to-night. To-morrow we'll talk it all over." He tucked an arm under hers and led her along the wet, shining street to a taxicab. She crouched in a corner of the cab, her body shaken with sobs. The young man moved closer and put a strong arm around her shoulders. "Don't you worry, Kitty. Yore big brother is on the job now." "I--I wanted to--to kill myself," she faltered. "I tried to--in the river--and--it was so black--I couldn't." The girl shivered with cold. She had been exposed to the night rain for hours without a coat. He knew her story now in its essentials as well as he did later when she wept it out to him in confession. And because she was who she was, born to lean on a stronger will, he acquitted her of blame. They swung into Broadway and passed taxis and limousines filled with gay parties just out of the theaters. Young women in rich furs, wrapped from the cruelty of life by the caste system in which wealth had encased them, exchanged badinage with sleek, well-dressed men. A ripple of care-free laughter floated to him across the gulf that separated this girl from them. By the cluster lights of Broadway he could see how cruelly life had mauled her soft youth. The bloom of her was gone, all the brave pride and joy of girlhood. It would probably never wholly return. He saw as in a vision the infinite procession of her hopeless sisters who had traveled the road from which he was rescuing her, saw them first as sweet and merry children bubbling with joy, and again, after the world had misused them for its pleasure, haggard and tawdry, with dragging steps trailing toward the oblivion that awaited them. He wondered if life must always be so terribly wasted, made a bruised and broken thing instead of the fine, brave adventure for which it was meant. CHAPTER XVII JOHNNIE MAKES A JOKE As Kitty stepped from the cab she was trembling violently. "Don't you be frightened, li'l' pardner. You've come home. There won't anybody hurt you here."