Then the long arm of the goddess known as Coincidence swung up and smote me full in the face, as solidly as a blacksmith's hammer smites an anvil. For the woman I saw walking white-faced yet determined toward where I knelt at the curb-side was Mary Lockwood herself.
I stood up and faced her in the cruel clarity of the slanting afternoon sunlight. For only a moment, I noticed, her stricken eyes rested on the figure of the woman lying along the curb-edge. Then they rose to my face. In those eyes, as she stared at me, I could read the question, the awful question, which her lips left unuttered. Yet it was not fear; it was not cowardice, that I saw written on that tragically colorless brow. It was more a dumb protest against injustice without bounds, a passionate and unarticulated pleading for some delivering sentence which she knew could not be given to her.
"No, she's not dead," I said in answer to that unspoken question. "She may not even be seriously hurt. But—"
I stared down at the telltale saliva streaked with blood. But the silvery-haired old man at my side put an end to any such efforts at prevarication.
"She's killed," he excitedly proclaimed.
"She's no such thing," I just as excitedly retorted.
"But you saw what they did to her?" he demanded, clutching at my shoulder. "You saw it. They ran her down, like a dog. They've ruined her; they've broken her body, for life!"
I could see Mary Lockwood's hand go out, as though in search for support. She was breathing almost as quickly, by this time, as the reviving girl on the curb-edge.
"Shut up," I curtly commanded the old man as he started in once more on his declamations, for the customary city crowd was already beginning to cluster about us. "It isn't talk we want now. We must get this girl where she can be taken care of."
It was then that Mary Lockwood spoke for the first time. Her voice was tremulous, but the gloved hand that hung at her side was no longer shaking.