“No, there ain't nobody,” she said at last, “and if there was there wouldn't—Stop! Hold on a minute, I got it! You've bin here six months or more, ain't ye?”
Felix nodded, his eyes still fastened on her own. A nod was better than the spoken word until his voice obeyed him the better.
“An' ye ain't had a soul in that room but yerself since ye've been here? Is that true?”
Again Felix nodded.
“Of course it's true, whether ye say it or not. What a fool I was to ask ye! I got it now. That sleeve-link belongs to a poor creature who slept in that room three or four days before ye come and skipped the next morning.”
Felix's fingers tightened on the arm of the chair. For the moment it seemed to him as if he were swaying with the room. “Some one you were kind to, I suppose,” he said, lifting a hand to shade his face, the words coming one at a time, every muscle in his body taut.
“What else could we do? Leave the poor thing out in the cold and wet?”
“It was, then, some one you picked up, was it not?” The room had stopped swaying and he was beginning to breathe evenly again. He saw that he had not betrayed himself. Her calm proved it; and so did the infinite pity that crept into her tones as she related the incident.
“No, some one Tom McGinniss picked up on his beat, or would have picked up hadn't John and I come along. And that wet she was, and everything streamin' puddles, an' she, poor dear, draggled like a dog in the gutter.”
Felix's sheltering hand sagged suddenly, exposing for a moment his strained face and wide-open eyes.