And then I began to feel that dull, leaden, soul-depressing sensation known as the sense of duty.  Why should that sense fall upon one as a weight and a burden?  I knew that I was doomed that day to give up the bulk of my store of hard-wrung coin to the relief of this Ada Lowery.  But I swore to myself that Tripp’s whiskey dollar would not be forthcoming.  He might play knight-errant at my expense, but he would indulge in no wassail afterward, commemorating my weakness and gullibility.  In a kind of chilly anger I put on my coat and hat.

Tripp, submissive, cringing, vainly endeavoring to please, conducted me via the street-cars to the human pawn-shop of Mother McGinnis.  I paid the fares.  It seemed that the collodion-scented Don Quixote and the smallest minted coin were strangers.

Tripp pulled the bell at the door of the mouldy red-brick boarding-house.  At its faint tinkle he paled, and crouched as a rabbit makes ready to spring away at the sound of a hunting-dog.  I guessed what a life he had led, terror-haunted by the coming footsteps of landladies.

“Give me one of the dollars—­quick!” he said.

The door opened six inches.  Mother McGinnis stood there with white eyes—­they were white, I say—­and a yellow face, holding together at her throat with one hand a dingy pink flannel dressing-sack.  Tripp thrust the dollar through the space without a word, and it bought us entry.

“She’s in the parlor,” said the McGinnis, turning the back of her sack upon us.

In the dim parlor a girl sat at the cracked marble centre-table weeping comfortably and eating gum-drops.  She was a flawless beauty.  Crying had only made her brilliant eyes brighter.  When she crunched a gum-drop you thought only of the poetry of motion and envied the senseless confection.  Eve at the age of five minutes must have been a ringer for Miss Ada Lowery at nineteen or twenty.  I was introduced, and a gum-drop suffered neglect while she conveyed to me a naive interest, such as a puppy dog (a prize winner) might bestow upon a crawling beetle or a frog.

Tripp took his stand by the table, with the fingers of one hand spread upon it, as an attorney or a master of ceremonies might have stood.  But he looked the master of nothing.  His faded coat was buttoned high, as if it sought to be charitable to deficiencies of tie and linen.

I thought of a Scotch terrier at the sight of his shifty eyes in the glade between his tangled hair and beard.  For one ignoble moment I felt ashamed of having been introduced as his friend in the presence of so much beauty in distress.  But evidently Tripp meant to conduct the ceremonies, whatever they might be.  I thought I detected in his actions and pose an intention of foisting the situation upon me as material for a newspaper story, in a lingering hope of extracting from me his whiskey dollar.

“My friend” (I shuddered), “Mr. Chalmers,” said Tripp, “will tell you, Miss Lowery, the same that I did.  He’s a reporter, and he can hand out the talk better than I can.  That’s why I brought him with me.” (O Tripp, wasn’t it the silver-tongued orator you wanted?) “He’s wise to a lot of things, and he’ll tell you now what’s best to do.”