her wonderment, the secretary hurried on her way, quite content.
It never occurred to her that the girl might have been tempted to
steal--and had not resisted the temptation.

It was on account of this brief conversation with the salesgirl
that Sarah was thinking intently of Mary Turner, after her return
to the office, from which Gilder himself happened to be absent
for the moment. As the secretary glanced up at the opening of
the door, she did not at first recognize the figure outlined
there. She remembered Mary Turner as a tall, slender girl, who
showed an underlying vitality in every movement, a girl with a
face of regular features, in which was a complexion of blended
milk and roses, with a radiant joy of life shining through all
her arduous and vulgar conditions. Instead of this, now, she saw
a frail form that stood swaying in the opening of the doorway,
that bent in a sinister fashion which told of bodily impotence,
while the face was quite bloodless. And, too, there was over all
else a pall of helplessness--helplessness that had endured much,
and must still endure infinitely more.

As a reinforcement of the dread import of that figure of wo, a
man stood beside it, and one of his hands was clasped around the
girl's wrist, a man who wore his derby hat somewhat far back on
his bullet-shaped head, whose feet were conspicuous in shoes with
very heavy soles and very square toes.

It was the man who now took charge of the situation. Cassidy,
from Headquarters, spoke in a rough, indifferent voice, well
suited to his appearance of stolid strength.