She wandered aimlessly for several blocks. She stopped once and asked aloud a question of herself: "Who?"
A man who was passing near her shoulder, humorously took the questioning word as intended for him.
"Eh? What? Who? Nobody! I didn't say anything," he laughingly said, and continued his way.
Soon the girl discovered that if she walked with such apparent aimlessness, some men looked at her with calculating eyes. She quickened her step, frightened. As a protection, she adopted a demeanor of intentness as if going somewhere.
After a time she left rattling avenues and passed between rows of houses with sternness and stolidity stamped upon their features. She hung her head for she felt their eyes grimly upon her.
Suddenly she came upon a stout gentleman in a silk hat and a chaste black coat, whose decorous row of buttons reached from his chin to his knees. The girl had heard of the Grace of God and she decided to approach this man.
His beaming, chubby face was a picture of benevolence and kind-heartedness. His eyes shone good-will.
But as the girl timidly accosted him, he gave a convulsive movement and saved his respectability by a vigorous side-step. He did not risk it to save a soul. For how was he to know that there was a soul before him that needed saving?