Patty was ready then to flee anywhere; but she could not persuade Harry Chalender to escape, and she vowed that she would not go without him. RoBards felt a cholera of jealousy burning his very vitals as he realized that his wife had seemed more afraid of leaving Harry Chalender than of the plague.
But Harry Chalender scorned to fly and RoBards would not leave town while Patty was there, even though she refused his love. He had just resigned himself to a life without her, and was hoping that the pestilence would end his suffering, when she came to him.
Only yesterday afternoon it was! And she came running along the street to his house—defying all the gossips in a greater fear!
He was living just below City Hall Park, on the east side of Broadway, in a once fashionable home that had become a fashionable boarding house. He happened to be standing at his window brooding when the sight of a woman running caught his eye. He was astounded to see that it was Patty Jessamine. Everybody was, for everybody knew her beauty. RoBards was down the stairs and at the front door just as she crossed Broadway, dodging among the tangled traffic.
She paused to lean against the pump that stood at the corner there, not heeding that her tiny shoes and the ribbons about her ankles were bedabbled with the mire, for she cowered from a staggering, groping wretch who seemed to turn black as he reeled, clutched at her wide skirts, and sprawled in the last gripe of cholera. She had to step across him to escape and RoBards ran to catch her as she swooned.
Her scream of dismay ended in a stuttering whisper:
“Marry me, Mr. RoBards! and take me away before I die.”
His exultance was so great at the undreamed-of benison that he felt a howl of wolfish triumph straightening his throat. So he had won her away from Harry Chalender! How? What did it matter? He cried,
“God knows how gladly!”
He stopped a passing hackney coach and took her home. She was afraid at first to get out of the cab, for she explained that her father was stricken with the cholera, and her brother had died in the house that afternoon.