He wrote a line, and rose and went back to the window. For an instant he stood and listened, then stepped out upon the fire-escape and walked across the shivering shadows towards the open window beyond.
Upon the little door beneath the window a girl was leaning, her head bowed upon her outstretched arm. The light in the room beyond was low, but he could see distinctly the slight outlines of her figure and the confusion of her heavy hair. She was sobbing softly.
"I beg your pardon," he said, the sympathetic quality in his voice dominating, "but I am sure that I can help you."
His forcible self-confidence exercised a compelling effect. The girl lifted her head and looked at him. Tears stood in her eyes, and as the electric light caught the clear drops they cast out scintillant flashes. Against the dim interior her head, with its nimbus of hair, had the droop and poise of the head of a mediæval saint.
"Oh, but you don't know how unhappy I am!" she said.
He spoke as he would have spoken to Mr. Paul in the same circumstances. "You have no one to whom you can go?"
"No."
"Then tell me about it."
His tone was that in which a physician might inquire the condition of a patient's digestion. It was absolutely devoid of the recognition of sex.
"Oh, I have worked so hard!" said Mariana.