"You young rascal!" a voice exclaimed. "What are you doing leaving a house in that fashion in the dead of night?"
Leonie grasped the hand and shook it. There were tears in her voice and in her eyes, tears that were the result of hysteria.
"I have been fighting with a maniac," she exclaimed, hastily. "For God's sake look!"
She had glanced up at the window through which she had escaped, and as she did so the street lamp showed her the figure of a woman standing in it.
"Don't jump, Liz! Don't, for the love of Heaven!" she shrieked, wildly. "You will kill yourself! There is no rope to save you, and there would not be a chance! Oh, Liz, for God's sake go back!"
But the voice only seemed alluring to the woman upon the sill.
She jumped from it back into the room, and as Leonie thought she had listened to her warning, she saw her appear there again with something clasped in her arms.
Before the girl could open her mouth through the horror upon her, there was a wild scream of laughter, and the next moment Liz had leaped into the air, with the burden still held closely to her.
Breathless, ghastly with hideous fear, Leonie grasped the hand of the man who stood in silence beside her.
People in the neighborhood who had heard the wild cry that the stillness of the night made all the more shrill and fierce, put their heads out of the window to see the cause, and in a moment the street was crowded with men, boys and even women, some drawing on their coats and others not even taking that precaution against the dampness of the night.