He was deeply hurt. He stood among those priceless books with a curious pain running through his veins. "What's the matter with me?" he asked himself. "Why do I chill my children and make them draw back?"
Graham shut the door, and then as quickly as an eel ran up-stairs to his bedroom, turned on the light, opened the door of the closet and pulled out a large suit-case. Then he began to hunt among the drawers of his wardrobe for some pajamas. He threw these in. From his bathroom he caught up a brush and comb and some bedroom slippers. These followed the pajamas. Then he shut the case, picked it up, crept quietly down-stairs, across the hall and out into the street, shutting the door softly behind him. He gave the taxi-driver the name of a small hotel frequented by actors, and jumped into the cab.
Ita Strabosck welcomed him as though he had been gone a week. "'Ow good you are to me!" she cried. "Eef you never do anysing else een your life, zis that you 'ave done for me vill be written down by zee angels een your book."
Graham laughed. "The angels—I wonder."
All the same he was a little proud of himself. Not many men would have perfected the rescue of this little girl so neatly from a house in which her body and soul were in jeopardy. It had been an episode in his sophisticated life which was all to his credit. He felt that,—with pleasure liked the idea of being responsible for this poor little soul, of having some one dependent entirely upon his generosity and who presently would wait for his step with a fluttering heart and run to meet him when he came in tired. He liked also the thought that this girl would be a little secret of his own,—some one personal to himself, to whom he could take his worries—and he had many—and get sympathy and even advice.
The cab drew up. Graham released himself from the girl's arms and led her into the small and rather fuggy foyer of the hotel, which was a stone's throw from Broadway. A colored porter pounced upon the bag and an alert clerk looked up from the mail that he was sorting.
"I want a room for my sister," said Graham, "with bath. Got one?"
"Fifth floor," said the clerk, after gazing fixedly for a moment at something at the back of the screen. He then pushed the book towards Graham.
Without a moment's hesitation, Graham wrote "Miss Nancy Robertson, Buffalo," and took the key that was extended to him. "Come on, Nancy," he said, and led the way to the elevator, in which was waiting a tall, florid woman carrying a small bulldog in her arms. She had obviously not taken very great pains to remove the make-up from her face which had been necessary to her small part. Graham recognized her as an actress whom he had seen some nights before in an English play at the Thirty-ninth Street Theatre, and he thought how queer life was and what odd tricks it played. Not a foot away from each other stood two women, the one just back from a place in which she had been aping a human being in a piece utterly artificial and untrue, the other who had played a part in a tragedy of grim and horrible reality, out of which she had been carried before the inevitable climax.
The colored boy, with a hospitable grin on his face, led the way along a narrow, shabby passage whose wall-paper was much the worse for wear, and finally opened the door of a small bedroom, switching on the light.