She had walked two blocks to her station and was about to mount the stairs when, to her utter astonishment, she saw the mystery child dart across the street. Almost by instinct she went in full pursuit.
The child, all oblivious of her presence, after crossing the street, darted down an alley and, after crossing two blocks, entered one of those dark and dingy streets which so often flank the best and busiest avenues of a city.
At the third door to the left, a sort of half basement entrance that one reached by descending a short stairs, the child paused and fumbled at the doorknob. Lucile was just in time to get a view of the interior as the door flew open. The next instant she sprang back into the shadows.
She gripped at her wildly beating heart and steadied herself against the wall as she murmured, “It couldn’t be! Surely! Surely it could not be.”
And yet she was convinced that her eyes had not deceived her. The person who had opened the door was none other than the woman who had treated the child so shamefully and had dragged her along the street. And now the child had come to the door of the den which this woman called home and of her own free will had entered the place and shut the door. What could be the meaning of all this.
Some mysteries are long in solving. Some are apparently never solved. Some scarcely become mysteries before their solution appears. This mystery was of the latter sort.
Plucking up all the courage she could command, Lucile made her way down the steps and, crowding herself through a narrow opening, succeeded in reaching a position by a window. Here she could see without being seen and could catch fragments of the conversation which went on within.
The child had advanced to the center of the room. The woman and a man, worse in appearance, more degraded than the woman, stood staring at her. There was something heroic about the tense, erect bearing of the child.
“Like Joan of Arc,” Lucile thought.
The child was speaking. The few words that Lucile caught sent thrills into her very soul.