"At last I've got you alone, Bessie, my dear!" He said it with suave
triumph in his tones. He caught Elizabeth by the wrists, and before she
could wrench herself away he had kissed her.
With a scream Elizabeth dropped the seven tin pails and the seven tin
shovels, and with one mighty wrench took her hands from his grasp.
Instinctively her hand went to her belt, where were now no pistols. If one
had been there she certainly would have shot him in her horror and fury.
But, as she had no other weapon, she seized a little shovel, and struck
him in the face. Then with the frenzy of the desert back upon her she
rushed up the stairs, out through the crowded store, and into the street,
hatless and coatless in the cold December air. The passers-by made way for
her, thinking she had been sent out on some hurried errand.
She had left her pocketbook, with its pitifully few nickels for car-fare
and lunch, in the cloak-room with her coat and hat. But she did not stop
to think of that. She was fleeing again, this time on foot, from a man.
She half expected he might pursue her, and make her come back to the hated
work in the stifling store with his wicked face moving everywhere above
the crowds. But she turned not to look back. On over the slushy
pavements, under the leaden sky, with a few busy flakes floating about
her.
The day seemed pitiless as the world. Where could she go and what should
she do? There seemed no refuge for her in the wide world.
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