For a moment Van Landing hesitated, puzzled by the sudden fear in the man’s face, then over his own crept grayness, and the muscles in it stiffened.

“My God!” he said, and his mouth grew dry.  “Have men brought men to this?”

For another half-moment there was silence which the child, looking from one to the other, could not understand, and her hands, pressed close to her breast, gripped tightly her cold fingers.  Presently Van Landing turned.

“Very well,” he said.  “I will go.  It was just that I know little of a real Christmas.  Good night.”

“Oh, don’t go—­don’t go, Mr. Van!  It’s going to be Christmas two days after to-morrow, Father, and the Christ-child wouldn’t like it if you let him go!” Carmencita held the sleeve of Van Landing’s coat with a sturdy clutch.  “He isn’t a damanarkist.  I can tell by his eyes.  They are so lonely-looking.  You aren’t telling a story, are you Mr. Van?  Is it truly truth that you haven’t anybody?”

“It is truly truth,” he said.  “I mean anybody to make Christmas for.”

“No mother or father or a little girl like me?  Haven’t you even got a wife?”

“Not even a wife.”  Van Landing smiled.

“You are as bad as Miss Barbour.  She hasn’t anybody, either, now, she says, ’most everybody being—­”

“Miss who?” Van Landing turned so sharply that the child jumped.  “Who did you say?”

“Miss Barbour.”  The eyes which were so like those he could not forget were raised to his.  “If you knew Miss Barbour she could tell you of plenty of people to make Christmas for.  She’s living right now with Mother McNeil, who isn’t really anybody’s mother, but just everybody’s.  But she don’t live there all the time.  Most of her people are dead or married and don’t need her, so she came to Mother McNeil to see how children down there live.  What’s the matter, Mr. Van?”

To hide the upleaping flame in his face and the sudden trembling of his hands Van Landing stooped down and picked up the handkerchief he had dropped; then he stepped back and out of the circle of light in which he had been standing.  For a moment he did not speak lest his voice be as unsteady as his hands, but, taking out his watch, he looked at it, then put it back with fumbling fingers.

“Her first name—­Miss Barbour’s first name,” he said, and the dryness of his throat made his words a little indistinct.  “What is it?”

With mouth rounded into a little ball, Carmencita blew on her stiff finger-tips.  “Frances,” she said, and first one foot and then the other was stamped for purpose of warmth.  “The damanarkist says God made her, but the devil has more to do with most women than anybody else.  He don’t like women.  Do you know her, Mr. Van?”

“If your friend is my friend—­I know her very well,” he said, and put his hands in his pockets to hide the twitching of his fingers.  “A long time ago she was the only real friend I had, and I lost her.  I have wanted very much to find her.”