“How brutal—how brutal!” she repeated to herself.
The policeman on his beat turned his bull’s eye on to her.
“Are you going to tell me to move on?” she asked him, plaintively.
“No, Madam,” he replied, and she was a little assuaged. At least he saw that she was a lady. She dried her eyes, and crossed back to the pavement, and down a side street. As she passed a little postern-like door in the wall—Rivers’ happened to be a corner house—it opened, and the artist came out. He still had her card in his hand.
They stood and faced each other.
“Oh, my God, how ill you look!” she exclaimed, “and it is all my fault. Won’t you even give me your hand?”
“Are you mad?” he said, contemporaneously with her speech. “Good God! was there ever a more idiotic thing for a woman in your position to do?”
He seized her arm, almost roughly, and led her away from the door.
“What are you going to do with me?”
“Put you in a cab, of course! You must not be seen here with me, on any account. I could hardly believe my eyes when your card was put into my hands.”