“What do you want to know?” asked Madge, rather frightened, although she did not know why.
“You are aware, of course, that we doctors are used to seeing pain and usually try to get at the cause, so that we may better know how to 272 relieve it. I should judge that you have known a lot of suffering; that sort of thing leaves marks. Fortunately, they can often be effaced in the young. I have been thinking that you were in need of a friend. No! Don’t draw back! I’ll say right now that my wife ’s the best woman on earth and I’ve got four kids. You ought to see the little rascals. Now I might as well tell you that I’m grateful to you for taking such good care of my patient. I’d also be glad of a chance to help you a little, or give advice if you happen to need any.”
Madge stared at him for a moment during which her eyes became somewhat blurred. The doctor’s offer seemed like the first really disinterested and friendly one that had been proffered to her for some years. In that vast New York she had become unused to that sort of thing. The other people in this place had been ever so kind, of course, but it was on account of their friend Hugo. At first she hesitated.
“You look like a man that can be trusted,” she said, very low.
“I feel that I am,” he answered, simply.
Then, gradually, moved by that desire to confess and trust in a friend that is one of the best qualities of human nature, she told of 273 her coming, in halting, interrupted words. The doctor kept silent, nodding now and then so that she became impressed with a certainty that he understood. At times that deep red color suffused her cheeks, but they would soon become pale again, all the more so for her dark-ringed eyes. Little by little her story became easier to tell. She had sketched it out in a few broad lines, but the man to whom she spoke happened to know the world. Her speaking relieved her burdened heart and gave her greater strength.
“And––and I think that’s all,” she faltered at last. “Do––do you really understand? Do you think I’ve been a shameless creature to venture into this? Can you realize what it is to be at the very end of one’s tether?”
The doctor looked at her, the tiny wrinkles in the corners of his eyes becoming more pronounced. He put out his long-fingered, capable hand to her, and she stretched out her own, timidly, in response.
“You and I, from this time on, are a pair of friends,” he told her. “Indeed, I’m acquainted with that huge beehive you came from, with its drones and its workers, its squanderers and its makers. I studied there for a couple of years, and I know why some of the women have a choice between the river 274 and even fouler waters. But let me tell you what I think of this matter. The desperate effort you made to save yourself may not have been very good judgment. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred such an endeavor would be worse than jumping from the frying-pan into the fire. But at least it argues something strong and genuine in you. You came because you felt that you could not give up the fight without one last supreme trial. Such a thing would take a lot of pluck.”
He stopped for a moment, looking into the whites of her eyes.