She came to very slowly. As I leaned over her, waiting for the heavy-lidded eyes to open, I let my glance wander back to the newspaper on the floor. I there read that Harriet Walter, the young star of the Broken Ties Company, had met with a serious accident. It had occurred while riding down Morningside Avenue in a touring-car driven by Percy Alward Adams, the son of the well-known Traction Magnate. The brake had apparently refused to work on Cathedral Hill, and the car had collided with a pillar of the Elevated Railway at the corner of One-hundred-and-ninth Street. Adams himself had escaped with a somewhat lacerated arm, but Miss Walter's injuries were more serious. She had been taken at once to St. Luke's Hospital, but a few blocks away. She had not, however, regained consciousness, and practically all hope of recovery had been abandoned by the doctors.
I was frenziedly wondering what tie could bind these two strangely diverse young women together when the girl beside me gave signs of returning life. I was still sousing a ridiculous amount of water on her face and neck when her eyes suddenly opened. They looked up at me, dazed and wide with wonder.
"What is it?" she asked, gazing about the room. Then she looked back at me again.
"I think you must have fallen," I tried to explain. "But it's all right; you mustn't worry."
My feeble effort at reassuring her was not effective. I could see the perplexed movement of her hands, the unuttered inquiry still in her eyes. She lay there, staring at me for a long time.
"You see, I'm your new neighbor," I told her, "and I heard you from my room."
She did not speak. But I saw her lips pucker into a little sob that shook her whole body. There seemed something indescribably childlike in the movement. It took a fight to keep up my air of bland optimism.
"And now," I declared, "I'm going to slip out for a minute and get you a little wine."
She made one small hand-gesture of protest, but I ignored it. I dodged in for my hat, descended the stairs to the street, got Benson on the wire; and instructed him to send the motor-hamper and two bottles of Burgundy to me at once. Then I called up St. Luke's Hospital. There, strangely enough, I was refused all information as to Harriet Walter's condition. It was not even admitted, in fact, that she was at present a patient at that institution.
The girl, when I got back, was sitting in a rocking-chair by the window. She seemed neither relieved nor disturbed by my return. Her eyes were fixed on the blank wall opposite her. Her colorless face showed only too plainly that this shock from which she had suffered had left her indifferent to all other currents of life, as though every further stroke of fate had been rendered insignificant. She did not even turn her eyes when I carried the hamper into the room and opened it. She did not look up as I poured the wine and held a glass of it for her to drink.