"Don't be long, Dan," she whispered faintly. "I'm scared to stay by myself."
Ten minutes later Dan hurried out of the eating-house at the corner, balancing a bowl of steaming soup in one hand and a plate of food in the other. He was soaked to the skin, and the rain trickled from his hair into his eyes. As he crossed the street a gust of wind caught his cap and hurled it away into the wet night. But he gave no thought to himself or to the weather, for the miracle had happened. That dancing gleam in the gutter came from a lighted lamp in a window behind which some one was waiting for him.
He found Birdie shaking with a violent chill, and it was only after he had got off her wet coat and wrapped her in a blanket, and persuaded her to drink the soup that she began to revive.
"What time of night is it?" she asked weakly.
"After eleven. You're going to stay where you are, and I'm going out and find me a room somewhere. I'll come back in the morning."
All of Birdie's alarms returned.
"I ain't going to stay here by myself, Dan. I'll go crazy, I tell you! I don't want to live and I am afraid to die. What sort of a God is He to let a person suffer like this?"
And poor old Dan, at death-grips with his own life problem, wrestled in vain with hers; arguing, reassuring, affirming, trying with an almost fanatic zeal to conquer his own doubts in conquering hers.
Then Birdie, bent on keeping him with her, talked of herself, pouring out an incoherent story of misfortune: how she had fainted on the stage one night and incurred the ill-will of the director; how the company went on and left her without friends and without money; how matters had gone from bad to worse until she couldn't stand it any longer. She painted a picture of wronged innocence that would have wrung a sterner heart than Dan's.
"I know," he said sympathetically. "I've seen what girls are up against at Clarke's."