"Why, my poor girl, what a notion! You--" he stammered.
"I been treated bad enough alive without bein' cut up when I'm dead," said she, interrupting him. "I get to thinkin' about it, wakin' up here in the night. He said his folks'd help me if I asked 'em."
"Of course, of course! Certainly we'll help!" said Vandervelde hastily.
"If I had any money saved up, 't wouldn't be so bad. But I ain't. We never do. I--I been sick a long time. What clothes I had they kep' against the rent I was owin', when they told me to get out. An' I walked an' walked,--an' then one o' them cops in Central Park, he seen me, an' next thing I knew I was here."
She was getting hysterical, and he saw that it was quite useless to try to reason with her; the one way to allay her terror was to make the promise she implored.
"Well, now that your message has reached us, Gracie, you need not be afraid any more, because what you fear won't happen; it can't happen. There!--Put it out of your mind."
She stared at him intently, and decided that this large, fair man was one to be implicitly trusted.
"You bein' one o' his people, if you say it won't happen, then it won't happen," she told him, and fetched a great sight of relief. "Oh! I was that scared I 'most died! I--I just naturally can't bear the idea o' bein' turned over to them doctors." And she shuddered.
"Well, now that you're satisfied you won't be, suppose you tell me something more immediate that I can do for you. Isn't there something you'd like?"
"I'd like it most of anything if you'd tell me somethin' about _him_," she said timidly. "I know I got no right to ast, me bein' what I am," she added, apologetically. "You see, nobody ever behaved to me like he did, an' I can't forget him."
She looked so pathetically eager, her look was so humble, that Vandervelde couldn't find it in his heart to deny the request. He found himself telling her that Peter Champneys had become a great painter, that he had never returned to America, and that his wife also was abroad.
"Is the lady he's married to as nice as him? I sure hope she's good enough for him," was Gracie's comment.
Seeing how mortally weak she was, Vandervelde took his departure, promising to see her again. He had a further interview with the house-physician and the head nurse. Whatever could be done for her would be done, but they had handled too many Gracies to be optimistic about this particular one. They knew how quickly these gutter-candles flicker out.