"Certainly," he said. "I will do anything in the world I can to spare you."
She did not reply, and he sat there nervously balanced on the edge of his seat, watching the lights of Harlem flash into view below. He had been hungry; he was no longer. Appetite had been succeeded by a gnawing anxiety. Again and again warm waves of shame overwhelmed him, alternating with a sort of wild-eyed pity for the young girl who sat so rigidly beside him, face averted. Once a mad desire to laugh seized him; he wondered whether it might be a premonition of hysteria, and shuddered. It did not seem as though he could possibly endure it another second to be tied by the foot to this silently suffering and lovely companion.
"Do you think," he said, hoarsely, "at the next station that if we rose together—and kept step——"
She shook her head.
"A—a sort of lock-step," he explained, timidly.
"I would if I thought it possible," she replied under her breath; "but I dare not. Suppose you should miss step! You are likely to do anything if it's only sufficiently foolish."
"You could take my arm and pretend you are my lame sister," he ventured.
"Suppose the train started. Suppose, by any one of a thousand possible accidents, you should become panic-stricken. What sort of a spectacle would we furnish the passengers of this car? No! No! No! The worst of it is almost over. My guest is there—astounded at my absence. Before I am even half-way back to Twenty-eighth Street she will have become sufficiently affronted to leave the house. I might as well go on to the end of the road." She turned toward him hastily: "Where is the end of this road?"
"Somewhere in the Bronx, I believe," he said, vaguely.