FROM THE LIFE
He hung up her dress—a faded blue-serge gown that had been darned on the elbows—and he placed the oil-stove under it, to dry it. He proceeded to make her a cup of tea, and to fry, in slices, some cornmeal mush that remained from breakfast. This he served with syrup. She ate it in hungry silence, with her bloodshot eyes fixed on nothing. He got the impression that speech and tears had both been exhausted for her.
When her plate was clean and her cup empty he took them from her, and she lay down again, on her side, and seemed to go to sleep. He stood a moment, considering her. She was, surely, not more than twenty years old; he was thirty-two; and there was nothing in his thought but fraternal pity for her. She was apparently a young street-walker, but he had lived on the streets himself for the greater part of fifteen years; and if she was an outcast—well, so was he. She looked desperately frail; the bones protruded in her cheeks and her temples; her eyes were sunken and dark in their sockets; her teeth showed between pinched lips. It was merely a girlish face, but suffering had marked it with ascetic lines of character and intelligence.
He decided that what she needed most was food. He counted the silver in his pocket, did a problem in mental arithmetic with his eyes on the calendar, and went out noiselessly to buy her something to eat. She was still sleeping when he returned—
[ 18 ]
