The girl looked up and again passed her hand over her white forehead with its mass of tangled fallen hair. Somehow Constance felt a tingling sensation of sympathy in her heart. Impulsively she put out her hand and took the cold moist hand of the girl.
"Because," she hesitated, struggling now with re-flooding consciousness, "because—I don't know. I thought, perhaps—" she added, dropping her eyes, "you could—help me."
She was speaking rapidly enough now, "I think they have employed detectives to trace me. One of them is almost up with me. I'm afraid I can't slip out of the net again. And—I—I won't go back to them. I can't. I won't."
"Go back to whom?" queried her friend. "Detectives employed by whom?"
"My folks," she answered quickly.
Constance was surprised. Least of all had she expected that.
"Why won't you go home?" she prompted as the girl seemed about to lapse into a sort of stolid reticence.
"Home?" she repeated bitterly. "Home? No one would believe my story. I couldn't go home, now. They have made it impossible for me to go home. I mean, every newspaper has published my picture. There were headlines for days, and only by chance I was not recognized."
She was sobbing now convulsively. "If they had only let me alone! I might have gone back, then. But now—after the newspapers and the search—never! And yet I am going to have revenge some day. When he least expects it I am going to tell the truth and—"
She stopped.