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Then she started, her gaze lifting quickly. Of a sudden she became aware that the girl was regarding her straightforwardly with those haggard eyes.

“Can you tell what the–the trouble is with me?” she asked.

She spoke under her breath, the wraith of a weary little smile about her mouth.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” answered Miss Smith contritely. “But please believe me–it was not mere cheap inquisitiveness that made me look.”

“I think I know,” said the girl softly. “You were sorry. And it doesn’t matter much–your seeing. Somehow I don’t mind your seeing.”

“But I haven’t really seen–I only caught a glimpse. And I’m afraid now that I’ve been pressing too closely against your side; perhaps giving you pain by touching your arms.”

“My arms are not hurting me,” said the girl, still with that queer ghost of a smile at her lips. “I’ve not been hurt or injured in any way.”

“Not hurt? Then why–“

She choked the involuntary question even as she was framing it.

“This–this has been done, I suppose, to keep me from hurting anyone else.”

“But–but I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you–yet? Then lift a fold of my wrap–carefully, so no one else can see while you are looking. I’d rather you did,” she continued, seeing how Miss Smith hesitated.

“But I am a stranger to you. I don’t wish to pry. I—-“

“Please do! Then perhaps you won’t be worrying later on about–about me if you know the truth now.”

With one hand Miss Smith turned back the edge of the cape, enlarging slightly the opening, and what she saw shocked her more deeply than though she had beheld some hideous mutilation. She saw that about both of the girl’s wrists were snugly strapped broad leather bands, designed something after the fashion of the armlets sometimes worn by athletes and artisans, excepting that here the buckle fastenings were set upon the tops of the wrists instead of upon the inner sides; saw, too, that these cuffs were made fast to a wide leather belt, which in an unbroken band encircled the girl’s trunk, so that her prisoned forearms were pressed in and confined closely against her body at the line of her waist. Her elbows she might move slightly and her fingers freely; but the hands were held well apart and the fingers in play might touch only the face of the broad girthing, which presumably was made fast by buckles or lacings at her back. As if the better to indicate how firmly she was secured, the wearer of these strange bonds flexed her arm muscles slightly; the result was a little creaking sound as the harness answered the strain. Then the girl relaxed and the sound ended.

“Oh, you poor child!” The gasped exclamation came involuntarily, carrying all the deeper burden of compassion because it was uttered in a half whisper. Quickly she snugged the cloak in to cover the ugly thing she had looked upon. “What have you done that you should be treated so?”

Indignation was in the asking–that and an incredulous disbelief that here had been any wrongdoing.

“It isn’t what I’ve done–exactly. I imagine it is their fear of what they think I might do if my hands were free.”

“But where are you going? Where are these people taking you? You’re no criminal. I know you’re not. You couldn’t be!”

“I am being taken to a place up the road to be confined as a dangerous lunatic.”

In the accenting of the words was no trace of rebellion or even of self-pity, but merely there was the dead weight and numbness of a hopeless resignation to make the words sound flat and listless.

“I don’t believe one word of it!” exclaimed Miss Smith, then broke off short, realizing that the shock of the girl’s piteous admission had sent her own voice lifting and that now she had a second listener. The woman diagonally across from her was sitting bolt upright and a pair of small eyes were narrowing upon her in a squint of watchful and hostile suspicion. Instantly she stood up–a small, competent, determined body.