"Listen! I want to talk to you. Come with me for a minute."
"Come? Why?"
"Never mind. Oh, it's all right. You owe me something, for I still have your name. Do this for me, please! It's only a step."
He yielded to her imploring eyes and followed grudgingly down the back stairs and into the night, wondering the while at his own weakness. She led the way, bareheaded, heedless of the cold. They were in that ill-favored district he had penetrated earlier in the day, but if it had been offensive then it was doubly so now, with its muffled sounds of debauchery and wickedness. She paused finally, fumbling at the door of one miserable structure, whereupon he growled:
"You live here? You're worse than—"
"'Sh-h!" She laid a finger on her lips as she let him in and lit a lamp, then she beckoned him toward the single rear room, shading the light with one hand and inviting him silently to peer over her shoulder.
The surprise of what he saw struck McGill dumb, for there in a crib lay the tiny lass who had befriended him that afternoon. Her lips were pouting sweetly, her face was flushed with dreams, one plump little arm was outside the covers, and just below the doubled fist McGill saw the deep dimpled bracelet of babyhood. Her presence made of these squalid surroundings a place of purity; the room became suddenly a shrine.
"The son-of-a-gun!" said McGill, inanely, then his face darkened once more. "I know her," he announced, grimly. "What are you doing with that kid—in this hell-hole?"
From the alleyways near by came a burst of ribaldry, but the woman's face was shining when she answered:
"Why, she's mine—my baby. We have no other home."