"Come," said the policeman, roughly laying his hand on the shoulder of the almost paralyzed girl.
"Where?" she gasped.
"Why, to the station-house, of course," he answered impatiently.
"Oh, you can't mean THAT."
"Come, come, no nonsense, no airs. You knew well enough that the station-house and jail were at the end of the road you were travelling. People always get found out, sooner or later. If you make me trouble in arresting you, it will go all the harder with you."
"Can't I—can't I send word to my friends?"
"No, indeed, not now. Your pals must appear in court to-morrow."
She looked appealingly around, and on every face within the circle of light saw only aversion and anger, while the cruel, mocking eyes of the man whose coarse advances she had so stingingly resented were almost fiendish in their exultation.
"It's of no use," she muttered bitterly. "It seems as if all the world, and God Himself, were against me," and giving way to a despairing apathy she followed the officer out of the store—out into the glaring lamplight of the street, out into the wild March storm that swept her along toward prison. To her morbid mind the sleet-lad en gale seemed in league with all the other malign influences that were hurrying her on to shame and ruin.
"Hi, there! Look where you are going," thundered the policeman to a passenger who was breasting the storm, with his umbrella pointed at an angle that threatened the officer's eye.