"Ah!" she retorted impulsively, "it is easy to talk. A man can do so much. What can a woman do?"
She checked herself abruptly, ashamed of having said so much. What was this miserable caitiff to her that she should as much as hint at her troubles in his hearing? In these days of countless spies, of innumerable confidence tricks set to catch the unwary, it was more than foolhardy to speak of one's private affairs to any stranger, let alone to an out-at-elbows vagabond who was just the sort of refuse of humanity who would earn a precarious livelihood by the sale of information, true or false, wormed out of some innocent fellow-creature. Hardly, then, were the words out of her mouth than the girl repented of her folly, turned quick, frightened eyes on the abject creature beside her.
But he appeared not to have heard. A wheezy cough came out of his bony chest. Nor did he meet her terrified gaze.
"What did you say, citoyenne?" he muttered fretfully. "Are you dreaming? . . . or what? . . ."
"Yes—yes!" she murmured vaguely, her heart still beating with that sudden fright. "I must have been dreaming. . . . But you . . . you are better——?"
"Better? Perhaps," he replied, with a hoarse laugh. "I might even be able to crawl home."
"Do you live very far?" she asked.
"No. Just by the Rue de l'Anier."
He made no attempt to thank her for her gentle ministration, and she thought how ungainly he looked—almost repellent—sprawling right across the porch, with his long legs stretched out before him and his hands buried in the pockets of his breeches. Nevertheless, he looked so helpless and so pitiable that the girl's kind heart was again stirred with compassion, and when presently he struggled with difficulty to his feet, she said impulsively:
"The Rue de l'Anier is on my way. If you will wait, I'll return the jug to the kind concierge who let me have it and I'll walk with you. You really ought not to be about the street alone."