"Where is she now?" asked Kirby gently.
"I don't know. She didn't tell me where she was going.
There's—there's something queer about her. I—I'm afraid."
"What are you afraid of?"
"She's so—so kinda fierce," Esther wailed.
It was impossible to explain, even to this big brown friend of Rose who looked as though his quiet strength could move mountains. He was a man. Besides, every instinct in her drove to keep hidden the secret that some day would tell itself.
Her eyes fell. They rested on the "News" some boarder had tossed on the table beside which she stood. Her thoughts were of herself and the plight in which she had become involved. She looked at the big headlines of the paper and for the moment did not see them. What she did see was disgrace, the shipwreck of the young life she loved so much.
Her pupils dilated. The words of the headline penetrated to the brain.
A hand clutched at her heart. She read again hazily—
JAMES CUNNINGHAM MURDERED
—then collapsed fainting into a chair.