These women were stupidly quiet. Ashe wondered if they would have
talked to each other across the court if he had not been in sight, or
if the gathering dusk silenced them. One of them was smoking a short
black pipe, and once let fall a spark upon the head of another idler a
couple of floors below. The injured woman poured forth a volley of
oaths, and Ashe expected a war of words. Nothing of the sort occurred.
The figure above was so indifferent as hardly to glance down where the
offended harridan was steaming with a fume of curses.

Philip began to be uneasy. He looked up at the darkening sky, and
backward to the gloom of the stairway behind him. No gas had been
lighted in the building, and he wondered if any ever were. It was
certainly too late for Mrs. Fenton to be poking about in these
dangerous places. They had been doing charity visiting together, and
she had insisted on coming to this one house more before going home. He
had remonstrated, but she had laughed at his fears.

"I don't believe any of these places are really dangerous," she had
declared. "I've been coming here for years, and nobody ever troubled
me."

"By daylight it is all very well," he had answered, "but it's a
different thing after dark. I have been here once or twice to see some
sick person in the evening, and it is a rough place."

"But it isn't after dark," she had persisted, "and it won't be for an
hour."

She had had her way, but Ashe reflected uneasily that if harm came to