Sommers escaped from the heated room with its noise and jostling men. He realized vaguely that he had made himself responsible for a thousand dollars--foolishly, he thought now. He had done it on the spur of the moment, with the idea that he would save Webber from a total loss, and thereby save Miss M'Gann. He felt partly responsible, too; for if he had not lingered at St. Isidore's yesterday, he could have delivered the order before the reaction had set in. He wondered, however, at his ready promise to find the thousand dollars for the extra margin. As he had told Miss Hitchcock, he had not a friend in the world to whom he could apply for help. Even the last duties to Alves he must perform alone, and to those he turned himself now. As he passed the Athenian Building, he remembered Dr. Leonard and went up to his office. The old dentist was the one friend in Chicago whom Alves would want near her to-morrow. Dr. Leonard came frowning out of his office, and without asking Sommers to sit down listened to what he had to say. "Yes," he replied, without unwrinkling his old face, "I saw it in the papers. I'll come, of course I'll come. I set an awful store by Alves, poor girl! There weren't nothing right for her in this world. Maybe there will be in the next." Sommers made no reply. He felt the kind old dentist's reproach. "Young feller," the dentist exclaimed sharply as Sommers turned to go, "I mistrust you have much to answer for in that poor girl's case. Does your heart satisfy you that you have treated her right?" Sommers bowed his head humbly before this blunt speech. In the sense that Dr. Leonard meant, perhaps, he was not guilty, but in other ways he was not sure. It was a difficult thing to treat any human soul justly and tenderly. The doctor took his silence for confession. "Well," he added, turning away and adjusting his spectacles that were lodged above his watery blue eyes, "I ain't no call to blame you. It's enough blame anyway to have hurt _her_--there wasn't a nicer woman ever born." As Sommers left the Athenian Building, his mind reverted to the talk with the brokers. He was glad that he had undertaken to save Webber from his loss. Alves would have liked it. Miss M'Gann had been kind to her when she was learning how to teach. Probably Webber would lose the money in some other venture, but he would do what he could to save the clerk's little capital now. Where could he get the money? There was but one person on whom he could call, and overcoming his dislike of the errand he went at once to Miss Hitchcock.