"Say," I implored. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm thinking," she muttered.
"For God's sake don't think," I wailed. "Get up and act. If I go back on the people that employ me and come here in the middle of the night to warn you, isn't it the least you can do to take advantage of it and go?"
She wheeled round on me, her face all alight with a wonderful beaming look.
"That's the reason," she said. "That's what made you come—humanity—pity! You've risked everything to help me. Oh, you don't know what you've done—what courage you've put into me. And you don't know what my gratitude is."
Before I knew it she had seized hold of one of my hands and held it against her heart, with her head bowed over it as if she was praying.
Do you guess how I felt? Ashamed?—perishing with it, ready to sink down on the floor and pass away. A murderess no doubt but even if a murderess thinks you did her a good turn when you didn't it makes you feel like a snake's a high-class animal beside you.
"Oh, come on," I begged. "Let go of me and get out."
She dropped my hand and looked at me—Oh, so soft and sweet!—and I saw tears in her eyes. That pretty near finished me and I wailed out:
"Don't stop to cry. You don't know but what they might get uneasy and come tonight. Put on your things and go."