Samuel took the pen, and then turned to the girl. “I beg pardon,” he said, “but I don't know your name.”
“Mary Smith,” she answered, and Samuel stared at her in surprise. “Mary Smith,” she repeated, and he wrote it down obediently.
The man took them upstairs; and Samuel, after helping the girl to a chair, shut the door and stood waiting. And she flung herself down upon the bed and burst into a paroxysm of weeping. Samuel had never even heard the word hysterics, and it was terrifying to him to see her—he could not have believed that so frail and slender a human body could survive so frightful a storm of emotion.
“Oh, please, please stop!” he cried wildly.
“I can't live without him!” she wailed again and again. “I can't live without him! What am I going to do?”
Samuel's heart was wrung. He went to the girl, and put his hand upon her arm. “Listen to me,” he said earnestly. “Let me try to help you.”
“What can you do?” she demanded.
“I'll go and see him. I'll plead with him—perhaps he'll listen to me.”
“All right!” she cried. “Anything! Tell him I'll kill myself! I'll kill him and Dolly both, before I'll ever let her have him! Yes, I mean it! He swore to me he'd never leave me! And I believed him—I trusted him!”
And Samuel clenched his hands with sudden resolution. “I'll see him about it,” he said. “I'll see him to-night.”