"I hope you're not busy--that I'm not bothering?" "Oh, no--not at all." "I couldn't help coming, somehow--I just couldn't go back without seeing you. I wanted to see a friendly face--to hear a friendly voice." She clasped her fingers tightly together: "Oh, you don't know how much you mean to me! I feel so alone--adrift--and I long so for some one to lean on, just for a little, until I get my bearings. It seems as though every atom of courage and confidence had oozed out of me. I don't believe that ever again in all my life I'll long for sympathy as I do this minute." She spoke slowly with breaths between, as though the heaviness of her heart made talking an effort. "I presume you miss your--uncle." There was a constraint in Mrs. Toomey's voice and manner which Kate was too engrossed and wretched to notice. She put her hand to her throat as though to lessen the ache there. "I can't tell you how much. And remorse--it's like a knife turning, turning--his eyes with the pain and astonishment in them when I struck at him so viciously in my temper; they haunt me. It's terrible." Mrs. Toomey fidgeted. Kate went on as though she found relief in talking. Her voice sounded thick, somehow, and lifeless with suffering. "I have such a feeling of heaviness, of oppression"--she laid her hand upon her heart--"I can't describe it. If I were superstitious I'd say it was a premonition." "Of what, for instance?" Mrs. Toomey looked frightened. Kate shook her head. "I don't know. The thought keeps coming that, bad as things have been, there are worse ahead of me--unhappiness--more unhappiness--like a preparation for something." Distinctly impressed, Mrs. Toomey exclaimed inanely: "Oh, my! Do you think so?" Was _she_ going to get "mixed up" in something, she wondered. "I have a dread of the future--a shrinking such as a blind person might have from a danger he feels but cannot see. Your friendship is the only bright spot in the blackness--it's a peak, with the sun shining on it!" Kate's eyes filled with quick tears. They were swimming as she raised them and looked at Mrs. Toomey. "I'm glad you feel that way," Mrs. Toomey murmured. Something in the tone arrested Kate's attention, an unconvincing, insincere note in it. She fixed her eyes upon her face searchingly, then she crossed the room swiftly and dropped upon her knees beside her. Taking one of her thin hands between both of hers she said, pleadingly: "You will be my friend, won't you? You won't go back on me, will you?" She could scarcely have begged for her life with more earnestness. "I am very fond of you," Mrs. Toomey evaded. She did not look at her. Kate regarded her steadily. Laying down the hand she had taken she asked quietly: "Will you tell me something truthfully, Mrs. Toomey?" Mrs. Toomey's mind, ratlike, scuttled hither and thither, wondering what was coming. "If I can," uneasily. Kate laid her hand upon the older woman's shoulder and searched her face: