He raised her gently.
"You should not kneel to me," he said, "it is not right."
"Yes, I will!" she cried, impulsively. "You are good—you are noble. You do not curse me for what I could not help. I want to show you how bitterly I deplore what has been done! But how are you to realize it?"
While they were speaking, a few drops of rain fell from the heavens, and Ida May, looking up, said to herself that even the angels above were weeping for her.
"Come!" he said, taking her by the hand and leading her along as though she were a little child, "you can not stand out in the rain. Come with me!"
He hailed a passing cab and placed her in it.
"Where are we going?" she asked, timidly, looking up into his troubled face.
"I do not know until I have had time to think," he answered. "I have told the driver to drive about for an hour. By that time I shall have arrived at some conclusion."
The girl's dark head drooped. Great as her own sorrow was, her heart bled for the trouble which she had unintentionally caused this young man.
On and on rolled the cab. So busy was Eugene Mallard with his own troubled thoughts that he almost forgot the girl shrinking away in her corner, who was regarding him so piteously and anxiously.