“What can she be doing here?” mused Toppy. “A little, pretty thing like her! She ought to be back home with mother and father and brother and sister, going to dancing-school, and all the rest of it.”
Toppy was no stranger to pretty girls. He had met pretty girls by the score while at college. He had been adored by dozens. After college he had met still more. None of them had interested him to any inconvenient extent. After all, a man’s friends are all men.
But this girl, Toppy admitted, struck him differently. He had never seen a girl that struck him like this before. He pushed his glass to one side. He was bored no longer. For the first time in four years the full shame of his mode of living was driven home to him, for as he feasted his eyes on the sun-kissed vision across the street his decent instincts whispered that a man who squandered and swilled his life away just because he had money had no right to raise his eyes to this girl.
“You’re a waster, that’s what you are,” said Toppy to himself, “and she’s one of those sweet——”
He was on his feet before the sentence was completed. In her perplexity the girl had turned to the men about her and apparently had asked a question. At first their utter unresponsiveness indicated that they did not understand.
Then they began to smile, looking at one another and at the girl. The brutal manner in which they fixed their eyes upon her sent the blood into Toppy’s throat. White men didn’t look at a woman that way.
Then one of the younger men spoke to the girl. Toppy saw her start and look at him with parted lips. The group gathered more closely around. The young man spoke again, grimacing and smirking bestially, and Toppy waited for no more. He was a waster and half drunk; but after all he was a white man, of the same breed as the girl on the stairs, and he knew his job.
He came across the snow-covered street like Toppy Treplin of old bent upon making a touchdown. Into the group he walked, head up, shouldering and elbowing carelessly. Toppy caught the young speaker by both shoulders and hurled him bodily back among his fellows. For an instant they faced Toppy, snarling, their hands cautiously sliding toward hidden knives. Then they grovelled, cringing instinctively before the better breed.
Toppy turned to the girl and removed his cap. She had not cried out nor moved, and now she looked Toppy squarely in the eye. Toppy promptly hung his head. He had been thinking of her as something of a child. Now he saw his mistake. She was young, it is true—little over twenty perhaps—but there was an air of self-reliance and seriousness about her as if she had known responsibilities beyond her years. And her eyes were blue, Toppy saw—the perfect blue that went with her fair complexion.
“I beg pardon,” stammered Toppy. “I just happened to see—it looked as if they were getting fresh—so I thought I’d come across and—and see if there was anything—anything I could do.”