“No, I wrote and wrote and could get no answer.  Then I went up to where he boarded, and the woman told me he’d been gone some months—­she didn’t know where.  He left no word, and she forgot to get the name of the express that came for his trunk.  He is down with sickness somewheres, or he’d have showed up.  He was not himself at all when I last saw him—­that’s long before you got back from Canada.  He’s done nothing but walk the streets since he come ashore.”

Stephen stopped, as if it were too painful for him to continue, looked around the room, noting its bareness, and asked, with a break in his voice:  “Where do you put her?”

“In the little room.  She wouldn’t take mine and she won’t let me help her.  She got work at first on 14th Street, in that big store near the Square, and worked there for a while, that was when she was with Dalton.  But Dalton drove her out.  And when she was near dead, with nothing to eat, some people picked her up and she stayed with them all night—­she never told me where.  That was last spring.  She stood it for some months living from hand to mouth, she working her fingers to the bone for him, until she was afraid of her life and left him again.  She was going she didn’t know where when I looked at her ’cross the car and she saw me.

“‘Martha!’ she cried, and was on the seat next me, my two arms about her.  She was sobbing like a lost child who has found its mother again.  There were two other women in the car, and they wanted to help, but I told them it was only my baby back again.  We were near 10th Street at the time and I got her out and brought her here and put her to bed—­ Listen!  Keep still a moment!  That’s her step!  Yes, thank God, she’s alone!  I’m always scared lest he should come with her.  Get in there behind the curtain!”

Martha had lifted the lamp again as she spoke, and was holding it over the banister, one hand down-stretched toward a woman whose small white fingers were clutching the mahogany rail, pulling herself up one step at a time.

“Don’t hurry, my child.  It’s a hard climb, I know.  Give me the box.  I began to get worried.  Are you tired?”

“A little.  It has been a long day.”  She sighed as she passed into the room, the nurse following with a large pasteboard box.

“It’s good to get back to you,” she continued, sinking into a chair near the mantel and unfastening her cloak.  “The stairs seem to grow steeper every time I come up.  Thank you.  Just hang it behind the door.  And now my hat, please.”  She lifted the cheap black straw from her head, freeing a fluff of light-golden hair, and with her fingers combed it back from her forehead.

“And please bring me my slippers.  I have walked all the way home, and my poor feet ache.”