Ross was alarmed at the sudden droop of her head. “Lean on me,” he said, “it’s my turn to be useful.”
She apologized. “I can’t stand what I could once,” she confessed, as he aided her into the hotel part of the building. “It’s my nerve—seem’s like it’s all gone. I go to pieces like a sick girl.”
She did, indeed, resemble the wreck of a woman as she lay out upon her bed, her hands twitching, her eyes closed, and Ross was profoundly alarmed. “You need the doctor,” he urged. “Let me bring him.”
“No,” she said, huskily, but with decision, “I’m only tired—I’ll be all right soon. Send the people away; tell ’em to go to bed.”
For half an hour Cavanagh remained in the room waiting to see if the doctor’s services would be required, but at the end of that time, as she had apparently fallen asleep, he rose and tiptoed out into the hall.
Lee followed, and they faced each other in such intimacy as the shipwrecked feel after the rescue. The house was still astir with the feet of those to whom the noises of the night had been a terror or a lure, and their presence, so far from being a comfort, a protection, filled the girl’s heart with fear and disgust. The ranger explained the outcome of the turmoil, and sent the excited folk to their beds with the assurance that all was quiet and that their landlady was asleep.
When they were quite alone Lee said: “You must not go out into the streets to-night.”
“There’s no danger. These hoodlums would not dare to attack me.”
“Nevertheless, you shall not go!” she declared. “Wait a moment,” she commanded, and reentered her mother’s room.
As he stood there at Lize Wetherford’s door, and his mind went back over her brave deed, which had gone far to atone for her vulgarity, his respect for her deepened. Her resolute insistence upon law showed a complete change of front. “There is more good in her than I thought,” he admitted, and it gave him pleasure, for it made Lee Virginia’s character just that much more dependable. He thrilled with a new and wistful tenderness as the girl opened the door and stepped out, close beside him.