It was one of her emancipated nights. Paula's spirit poured out over the city, for her mind was lit with thoughts of the ultimate redemption of her race. Bellingham could not have found her in his world that hour.... Emerging from Broadway to Forty-fourth Street, at eight in the evening, she passed under the hot brilliance of a famous hotel-entrance. As it never would have occurred to her to do in a less exalted moment, Paula glanced at a little knot of men standing under the lights. The eyes of one were roving like an unclean hand over her figure. Suddenly encountering her look, a bold, eager, challenge stretched itself upon his face. In the momentary panic, her glance darted to the others instinctively for protection—and found three smiling corpses.... Here were little Bellinghams; here, the sexual drunkenness which has made Man's course "a crawl through millenniums" to God, instead of a flight through decades. What a pitiless revelation!... She clung to her big Ideal in the West. It came to her for a second like a last and single hope—that Charter was not like that.... "God is patient and woman is aroused!" she whispered.
And farther up, a little way into Forty-seventh, Paula found a Salvation Army circle under the torch. A man with a pallid, shrunken face turned imploring eyes from one to another of the company, exclaiming: "I tell you, man's first work here below is to save his soul! I pray you—men and women, here to-night—to save your souls!"
Paula tossed her purse upon the big drum, as she passed swiftly. Luckily there was carfare in her glove, for she had not thought of that. Never before had she felt in such fullness her relation to the race....
A hansom-cab veered about the edge of the Salvation circle, swift enough to attract her eye. The horse had started before the driver was in the seat. The latter was fat and apoplectic. It was all he could do to regain his place, so that the reins still dangled. The possibility of a cab-horse becoming excited held only humor for the crowd, which parted to let the vehicle by. The horse, feeling his head, started to run just as the driver seized one of the lines and jerked his beast into the curb. There was an inhuman scream. A strange, boneless effigy of a man with twisted, waving arms—went down before the plunging horse, so suddenly swerved.... A hush seemed to have fallen upon the noisy Broadway corner. Paula was not blind in the brief interval which followed, but the world seemed gray and still, like a spectral dawn, or the unearthly setting of a dream.
"The shaft bored into him, and the horse struck him after he fell," a voice explained.
They lifted him. There was particular dreadfulness in the quantity of fluid evenly sheeted on the pavement as from a pail carefully overturned. Startling effrontery attached to the thought of man's heaven-aspiring current swimming like this upon a degraded city road. The horse, now held by the bit, snorted affrightedly at the odor. They had carried the unfortunate to the sidewalk under the lights of a tobacco-shop window. The upper part of his head and face was indefinite like a crushed tin of dark paint. But mouth and nose and chin of the upturned face left an imperishable imprint upon her mind. It was Bellingham.... Paula fled, her lips opening in a sick fashion. It seemed hours before she could reach the sanctuary of her room, where she sobbed in the dark.
EIGHTH CHAPTER
PAULA MAKES SEVERAL DISCOVERIES IN THE CHARTER HEART-COUNTRY, AND IS DELIGHTED BY HIS LETTERS TO THE SKYLARK
The morning paper stated that Dr. Bellingham had suffered a fracture of the skull and internal injury, but might live. A note to Paula from Madame Nestor late the next day contained the following paragraph: "I called at the hospital to inquire. A doctor told me that the case is likely to become a classic one. Never in his experience, he stated, had he witnessed a man put up such a fight for life. It will be long, however, before he is abroad again. He must have been following you quite madly, because there never was a man more careful in the midst of city-dangers than Bellingham. Why, a scratched finger completely upset him—in the earlier days. Inscrutable, but thrilling—isn't it, my dear Paula?"