"The District Attorney told me to bring this girl here on my way
to the Grand Central Station with her."

Sarah got to her feet mechanically. Somehow, from the raucous
notes of the policeman's voice, she understood in a flash of
illumination that the pitiful figure there in the doorway was
that of Mary Turner, whom she had remembered so different, so
frightfully different. She spoke with a miserable effort toward
her usual liveliness.

"Mr. Gilder will be right back. Come in and wait." She wished
to say something more, something of welcome or of mourning, to
the girl there, but she found herself incapable of a single word
for the moment, and could only stand dumb while the man stepped
forward, with his charge following helplessly in his clutch.

The two went forward very slowly, the officer, carelessly
conscious of his duty, walking with awkward steps to suit the
feeble movements of the girl, the girl letting herself be dragged
onward, aware of the futility of any resistance to the inexorable
power that now had her in its grip, of which the man was the
present agent. As the pair came thus falteringly into the center
of the room, Sarah at last found her voice for an expression of
sympathy.

"I'm sorry, Mary," she said, hesitatingly. "I'm terribly sorry,
terribly sorry!"

The girl, who had halted when the officer halted, as a matter of
course, did not look up. She stood still, swaying a little as if