Megan got out and as her feet touched the ground, as she saw that she was able to respond to the necessity of moving, her fear suddenly, perceptibly lightened. It passed like pain, leaving her weak-kneed but with a calm that can come sometimes from exhaustion. She looked up at the white slab set over the door and the words graven on it. A thin rain began to fall in slanting lines across the light of the oil lamp and but for that light she would have believed the orphanage to have been long abandoned. Not a sound came from it. As they moved toward the steps a soldier suddenly stepped into the radius of light. He wore a dirty gray uniform and had a fat face pitted with smallpox which had blinded one eye. He was followed by several soldiers who came out of the door of the eating-house and two or three other men in nondescript clothes only a little better than a coolie's. The Doctor fumbled in his pockets for his pass and spoke to the first soldier in a voice which because of its totally unexpected hail-fellow joviality struck Megan as a little shocking. He was making, she was sure, some jest about his inability to find anything, and the very falseness of his air of good-fellowship told her their attempt had become desperate. The failure of the guard to be at the station had weighed down the danger side of the scale and what might be behind the walls of the orphanage held the other side in uncertainty. She stood quietly holding her collar across her mouth while the Doctor produced all his passes, Chinese, French and English. The group pressed closer around them, close enough to brush her shoulder. They seemed profoundly stupid but obstinately insistent on being in on whatever was to happen. "Why don't they go on?" thought Megan. "Can they possibly care what we do!" And their motives, so impossible to clarify, represented still another element in their present problem. But the most important was the dark and apparently deserted orphanage. Megan dropped her eyes to the ground; she could not bear to look at the Chinese, nor at the Doctor who was flourishing his passes under the eyes of the sullen soldier, joking and even laughing in his unnaturally cheery voice. She could not bear to take part in his humiliation; she was ashamed at even, feeling it to be humiliating. It was courage of a sort for which she was too petty. Suddenly Doctor Strike changed his tactics. "Well, well," he said abruptly but still jovially, "we will just have a knock at the door and see who is in." He caught Megan's arm and pushed her ahead of him up the five steps to the door. He rapped on it with his fist and called not loudly but with sharp insistence, "Miss Reed! Miss Reed!"