Undecided, Major Stone stood a minute rubbing his nose pensively with a small forefinger; then the resolution to act fastened upon him. He slipped his coat back on, smoothed down his thin mane of reddish gray hair with his hands, stepped out into the hall and rapped delicately with a knuckled finger upon the door of the next room. There was no answer, so he rapped a little harder; and at that a sob checked itself and broke off chokingly in the throat that uttered it. From within a voice came. It was a shaken, tear-drained voice--flat and uncultivated. "Who's there?" The major cleared his throat. "Is it a woman--or a man?" demanded the unseen speaker without waiting for an answer to the first question. "It is a gentleman," began the major--"a gentleman who----" "Come on in!" she bade him--"the door ain't latched." And at that the major turned the knob and looked into a room that was practically a counterpart of his own, except that, instead of a trunk, a cheap imitation-leather suitcase stood upright on the floor, its sides bulging and strained from over-packing. Upon the bed, fully dressed, was stretched a woman--or, rather, a girl. Her head was just rising from the crumpled pillow and her eyes, red-rimmed and widely distended, stared full into his. What she saw, as she sat up, was a short, elderly man with a solicitous, gentle face; the coat sleeves were turned back off his wrists and his linen shirt jutted out between the unfastened upper buttons and buttonholes of his waistcoat. What the major saw was a girl of perhaps twenty or maybe twenty-two--in her present state it was hard to guess--with hunched-in shoulders and dyed, stringy hair falling in a streaky disarray down over her face like unraveled hemp. It was her face that told her story. Upon the drawn cheeks and the drooped, woful lips there was no dabbing of cosmetics now; the professional smile, painted, pitiable and betraying, was lacking from the characterless mouth, yet the major--sweet-minded, clean-living old man though he was--knew at a glance what manner of woman he had found here in this lodging house. It was the face of a woman who never intentionally does any evil and yet rarely gets a chance to do any good--a weak, indecisive, commonplace face; and every line in it was a line of least resistance. That then was what these two saw in each other as they stared a moment across the intervening space. It was the girl who took the initiative. "Are you one of the police?" Then instantly on the heels of the query: "No; I know better'n that--you ain't no police!" Her voice was unmusical, vulgar and husky from much weeping. Magically, though, she had checked her sobbing to an occasional hard gulp that clicked down in her throat.