“He could easily be found,” Elim put in; “I could have an orderly detailed, word brought you in no time.” The girl paid not the slightest heed to his proposal. From the street came a hoarse drunken shouting, a small inflamed rabble streamed by. It wouldn't be safe to leave Rosemary Roselle alone here with Indy. He recalled the threat of the black pomposity he had driven from the house--it was possible that there were others, banded, and that they would return. It was clear to him that he must stay until its head reappeared, order had been reestablished--or, if he went out, take the girl with him. “You let the capt'n do what he says,” the woman urged. Rosemary Roselle's eyes turned toward Elim; it was, seemingly, the first time she had become aware of his presence. She said in a voice delicately colored by hate: “Thank you, I couldn't think of taking the--the orderly from his conquests.” “Then I'll find your father myself,” Elim replied. “You will come with me, of course; show me where to go. It would be a good thing to start at once. I--we--might be of some assistance to him with his tobacco.” Indy declared with an expression of instant determination: “We'll go right along with you.” She silenced Rosemary's instinctive protest. “I'll get your hat and shawl,” she told the girl. And, before the latter could object, the colored woman hurried from the room. Silence enveloped the two at the table. Elim replaced his revolver in its belt. He had never before studied a girl like Rosemary Roselle; fine white frills fell about her elbows from under the black short sleeves. Her skin was incredibly smooth and white. It was evident that her hands had never done manual labor; their pointed little beauty fascinated him. He thought of the toil-hardened hands of the women of his home. This girl represented all that he had been taught to abjure, all that--by inheritance--he had in the abstract condemned. She represented the vanities; she was vanity itself; and now he was recklessly, contumaciously, glad of it. Her sheer loveliness of being intoxicated him; suddenly it seemed as absolutely necessary to life as the virtues of moral rectitude and homely labor. Personally, he discovered, he preferred such beauty to the latter adamantine qualities. He had a fleet moment of amazed self-consciousness: Elim Meikeljohn--his father an elder in the house of God--astray in the paths of condemned worldly frivolities! Then he recalled a little bush of vivid red roses his mother carefully protected and cultivated; he saw their bright fragrant patch on the rocky gray expanse of the utilitarian acres; and suddenly a light of new understanding enveloped his mother's gaunt drearily-clad figure. He employed in this connection the surprising word “starved.” ... Rosemary Roselle was a flower. Indy returned with a small hat of honey-colored straw and a soft white-silk mantilla. The former she drew upon the girl's head and wrapped the shawl about the slim shoulders.