This, she reflected, was of a piece with all that she knew of Clare Kendry.
Stepping always on the edge of danger. Always aware, but not drawing
back or turning aside. Certainly not because of any alarms or feeling of out-
rage on the part of others.
And for a swift moment Irene Redfield seemed to see a pale small girl
sitting on a ragged blue sofa, sewing pieces of bright red cloth together,
while her drunken father, a tall, powerfully built man, raged threateningly
up and down the shabby room, bellowing curses and making spasmodic
lunges at her which were not the less frightening because they were, for the
most part, ineffectual. Sometimes he did manage to reach her. But only the
fact that the child had edged herself and her poor sewing over to the farther-
most corner of the sofa suggested that she was in any way perturbed by this
menace to herself and her work.
Clare had known well enough that it was unsafe to take a portion of the
dollar that was her weekly wage for the doing of many errands for the
dressmaker who lived on the top floor of the building of which Bob Kendry
was janitor. But that knowledge had not deterred her. She wanted to go to
her Sunday school's picnic, and she had made up her mind to wear a new
dress. So, in spite of certain unpleasantness and possible danger, she had
taken the money to buy the material for that pathetic little red frock.
There had been, even in those days, nothing sacrificial in Clare Kendry's
idea of life, no allegiance beyond her own immediate desire. She was self-
ish, and cold, and hard. And yet she had, too, a strange capacity of trans-
forming warmth and passion, verging sometimes almost on theatrical
heroics.
Irene, who was a year or more older than Clare, remembered the day that
Bob Kendry had been brought home dead, killed in a silly saloon-fight.
Clare, who was at that time a scant fifteen years old, had just stood there
with her lips pressed together, her thin arms folded across her narrow chest,
staring down at the familiar pasty-white face of her parent with a sort of
disdain in her slanting black eyes. For a very long time she had stood like
that, silent and staring. Then, quite suddenly, she had given way to a torrent
of weeping, swaying her thin body, tearing at her bright hair, and stamping
her small feet. The outburst had ceased as suddenly as it had begun. She
glanced quickly about the bare room, taking everyone in, even the two po-
