A bell within tinkled
faintly; Susan started, shivered. But the young man, looking
straight at the door, did not see. A colored girl with a
pleasant, welcoming face opened, stood aside for them to enter.
He went straight up the stairs directly ahead, and Susan
followed. At the threshold the trembling girl looked round in
terror. She expected to see a place like that foul, close little
farm bedroom--for it seemed to her that at such times men must
seek some dreadful place--vile, dim, fitting. She was in a
small, attractively furnished room, with a bow window looking
upon the yard and the street. The furniture reminded her of her
own room at her uncle's in Sutherland, except that the brass bed
was far finer. He closed the door and locked it.
As he advanced toward her he said: "_What_ are you seeing? Please
don't look like that." Persuasively, "You weren't thinking of
me--were you?"
"No--Oh, no," replied she, passing her hand over her eyes to try
to drive away the vision of Ferguson.
"You look as if you expected to be murdered. Do you want to go?"
She forced herself to seem calm. "What a coward I am!" she said
to herself. "If I could only die for him, instead of this. But
I can't. And I _must_ get money for him."
To the young man she said: "No. I--I--want to stay."
Late in the afternoon, when they were once more in the street,
he said.
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