He was aching with remorseful fear. "Oh, if we had not stayed so long," he groaned, all the beauty and charm of the morning swept away by a wave of guilt. "Only think! I left the house without a word of greeting to her! Doesn't it show that there is no peace or security for either of us so long as we remain here? I have tried twice to get away from this, and now—"
The electric carriage came smoothly to the door, and Leo, dismissing the driver, motioned Victor to enter. "I'll drive," she said; and they swept out of the gate and down the boulevard as if, by a wafture of the hand, this young girl had invoked the aid of an Oriental magician.
The run was easy and swift, till they reached the crowded cross-street which led westward into the city deeps; and as the carts thickened and coarse and vicious humanity began to swarm Victor was moved to assert the man's prerogative. He resented the admiring glances which the loafers addressed to his companion, and a feeling of awkward helplessness came upon him. "I wish you'd let me run this car," he said, morosely.
Slowly they felt their way to the west, straight on toward a great railway depot, with Leo deftly winding her way amid trucks and express wagons, darting past clanging street-cars, and plowing through swarms of nondescript men and slattern women, till at last she halted on a crossing, and, leaning from the window, inquired of the police officer the way to the Bond Street Station.
"Right around the corner, Miss," he replied, with a smile, pointing the way with his club.
She turned up a narrow alley which ran parallel with the great domed shed of the railway, and drew up before an ugly doorway in a grimy brick building of depressing architecture.
Victor alighted with a full realization of having left heaven for a filthy, squalid hell. The clang and hiss of engines in the shed, the jar of heavy trucks, the cries of venders, the grind and howl of cars, the sodden stream of humankind, deafened and appalled him. Nevertheless, he took the lead into the gloomy anteroom of the station, which was half filled with officers in uniform escorting or placidly watching dull-hued, depressed, and unkempt men and women in arrest.
On inquiry of another officer, they were directed to the door of a long hall, which was in effect a tunnel. "You'll find your party in the court-room," the officer said.
Victor led the way through this battered hallway, and at the end of it came into a large, bare room lighted with dusty windows on the north. It was in effect a hall divided in halves by an open railing. In the eastern end of the chamber the judge was seated surrounded by his clerks examining a little group of silent men. In the western half of the room, outside the railing, sat a somber and motley assemblage of negroes, Italians, and Greeks, mostly young, each presenting a savage and sullen face. In the midst of such a throng of miscreated beings Leo seemed of angelic loveliness and purity.
Before the crowd became aware of her, the keen-eyed girl had discovered the objects of their search. "There they are," she whispered, pointing to the corner at the judge's right, where Mrs. Joyce and Mrs. Ollnee were seated, in close conversation with a dark, smoothly-shaven man of middle age. "Oh, I'm so glad," she added, "Mr. Bartol is with them."