"Losh yer way, did shye, me love? Mile-En' Road, to b'shure; bring ye there insh jiffy. Come 'long, come 'long, me lamb! Mile-En' Road—insh jiffy"—leading him at the same moment to the open door of a public-house opposite.
He tries laughingly to shake her off; but she clings to him with a grasp of iron. Being unwilling to use her roughly, he is about to put his hand into his pocket to purchase freedom, when a sudden drunken sortie from the house in question hurls them both off the footpath and effects his purpose. The row soon looks rather alarming, people crowding from all parts, and the night becomes hideous with shrieks and imprecations. Armstrong stands by, watching a scene to which he was well accustomed in his earlier days, until he notices that two policemen, pluckily trying to restore order, are getting rather badly handled; then he begins pushing his way to give them help, when an unexpected backward movement of the crowd obliges him to retreat, and a woman, who has been feebly struggling to get away, is thrown heavily against his shoulder, where she lies without movement. He throws his strong arm around her and plows his way to an open hall door a few yards further down, where he leans panting for a moment against the wall.
"Are you hurt?" he asks gently; but, as she makes no answer, he raises the hanging head, and the dismal yellow light of a gas-jet in the street outside falls on the face of Adelaide Armstrong—a face livid, worn, ghastly, from which the bloom and life of youth have fled.
Armstrong does not recognize her in the least; nevertheless he remains gazing with a startled fascination into the unconscious face until she opens her heavy eyes and looks straight into his.
"Thomas Armstrong!" she says dreamily.
"Great Heaven," he cries, "is it you?"
He starts back, shaking her from him; she sways, tries to save herself, and is on the point of falling when he puts out his hand, and she grasps it feverishly.
"I—I think I must have been crushed a little in the crowd; I feel faint," she says gaspingly. "Will you—help me up to my room? It is in the next house to this." Then, seeing that he hesitates, she adds, with a hard laugh, "You can take a bath—wash off my touch—afterward, you know."
Gravely he puts out his arm, and they toil slowly and silently up the rotting evil-smelling stairway to a garret furnished with one chair, a table, and a litter in one corner, dimly suggesting a bed. She sinks upon the chair exhausted.
"There is a bit of candle on the table. If you have a match, will you strike it?"