Kate put her hand on Gordon's arm and pressed her red lips together,
shivering. "O dear! O dear! what a cry! I can't go any closer. I'll
wait for you out at the edge of the crowd."

He pushed into the throng, lifted the woman, spoke a few words of
tenderness to her, and told her he would call at her home later.

As he was about to leave, a tall, delicate man working among the
ruins reeled and sank in a faint. When he revived, he quit his job
and went home without a word.

"What was the matter with that man?" Gordon asked the foreman of
the wrecking company.

"Starved, to tell you the truth. He came here yesterday and begged
for a job. He looked so pale and sick I couldn't refuse him. He
fainted the first hour and went home. He came back this morning and
begged me to try him again. I did, but you see he is too weak. He
told me his family was starving."

He joined Kate and they crossed the City Hall Square and walked
down Centre Street to the Tombs prison.

She was pale and quiet, glancing at him now and then.

"I've an engagement at the Tombs," he told her, "with a lady to
whom I used to make innocent love in our youth in a college town.
I got a note from her yesterday, written in the clear, beautiful
hand I recognised from the memory of little perfumed things she used
to send me. You don't know what a queer sick feeling came over me