We walked on, the street traveling beneath and unnoticed by us. She stopped me at Houston street and the Bowery and I looked about me as if descended from a dream. She wanted me to leave her there and wanted me to return to Chatham Square, or from wherever I had come. But the bulldog in me growled and persisted in seeing her to her door. We halted at a modest dwelling-house in Houston street, near Mott street. She thanked me with very much feeling and, expecting a modicum of manners from me, waited for a second for my response. There are things which we learn without being aware, and I knew and felt that I should say something, but my courage had fled, my knees weakened under me and the words which I meant to utter stuck in my throat, kept there by my fear of not being able to use the right expression.
At last I squeezed out a gruff "Good night," and then turned to leave. I was not permitted to go.
"Where are you going?" she asked. "I am afraid you are anxious to return to that place on Chatham Square. Don't go there."
"Where else can I go?"
"Where else?" she asked, with a mingling of pity and contempt. "Mr. Kildare, I have absolutely no right to interfere with your business, but I have the right to tell you the truth. You may not know it or would if you did know it, deny it, but you and most of the men of that gang are too good to be of it. We are strangers, and you may think me presumptuous, but a man, strong and able bodied as you, sins against his Maker if he wastes his days in an idleness which is hurtful to himself and others."
"Oh, I heard that before, young lady, but that sort of talk don't amount to anything."
"It doesn't amount to anything? From what you have told me about yourself and from what I have seen of the street life, I am afraid it is not absolutely impossible that, one of these days, you may find yourself in serious trouble. And, Mr. Kildare, you can rest assured that the prisons are full of men who are convinced when it is too late that this sort of talk does amount to something. You say you do not know where else to go? The evening is beautiful. There are parks, the river-front, the Brooklyn Bridge, where one can go and sit and think——"
"Think," I interrupted, "now, what would I be thinking about?"
She remained silent for some little while and then held out her hand to me.
"I am so sorry for you, so sorry. Do try and be a man, a man who has more than strength and muscle. And—and—do not be offended at my solicitude—pray, pray often." She had almost entered the hall, but stepped back again and whispered, "I will pray for you to-night."