Rose-Marie, still struggling, felt an added weight of apprehension. Not only her own safety was at stake—Lily, who was so weak, was in danger of being hurt. She jerked back, with another cry.
"Oh, God help me!" she cried, "God help us!"
Silently, but with a curious persistence, the child clung to the man's trouser leg. With an oath he looked back again over his shoulder.
"Leave go of me," he mouthed. "Leave go o' me—y' little brat! 'r I'll—"
And "Let go of him, Lily," sobbed Rose-Marie, forgetting that the child could not hear. "Let go of him, or he'll hurt you!"
The child lifted her sightless blue eyes wistfully to the faces above her—the faces that she could not see. And she clung the closer.
Jim was swearing, steadily—swearing with a dogged, horrible regularity. Of a sudden he raised his heavy foot and kicked viciously at the child who clung so tenaciously to his other leg. Rose-Marie, powerless to help, closed her eyes—and opened them again almost spasmodically.
"You brute," she screamed, "you utter brute!"
Lily, who had never, in all of her broken little life, felt an unkind touch, wavered, as the man's boot touched her slight body. Her sightless eyes clouded, all at once, with tears. And then, with a sudden piercing shriek, she crumpled up—in a white little heap—upon the floor.