Mrs. Campbell sat down gingerly, very erect. They looked at each other.
"I might as well talk straight out to you," Mrs. Campbell said, as if it were a customary phrase. "I met Mrs. Morris, Mrs. Updike's sister, at the lodge convention in Oakland last week, and she told me about you, and I promised to look you up. Well, when I found out! I told Mr. Campbell I was coming straight down here to talk to you. If you want to stay in a place like this, well and good, it's your affair. Though I should feel it my duty to write to your mother. I wouldn't want my own girl left in a strange town, at your age, and nobody taking any interest in her."
"I'm sure it's very kind." Helen murmured in bewilderment.
"Well,"—Mrs. Campbell drew a long breath and plunged,—"I suppose you know the sort of person this Kittie Brown, she calls herself, is? I suppose you know she's a bad woman?"
A wave of blackness went through the girl's mind.
"Everybody in town knows what she is," Mrs. Campbell continued. "Everybody knows—" She went on, her voice growing more bitter. Helen, half hearing the words, choked back a sick impulse to ask her to stop talking. She felt that everything about her was poisoned; she wanted to escape, to hide, to feel that she would never be seen again by any one. When the hard voice had stopped it was an effort to speak.
"But—what will I do?"
"Do? I should think you'd want to get out of here just as quick as you could."
"Oh, I do want to. But where can I go? I—my rent's paid. I haven't any money."
Mrs. Campbell considered.