My fingers closed yet more tightly over the small hand, but her face
remained rigid, the lines deep about the mouth.

"The landlady had turned me out," speaking now bitterly and swiftly,
"retaining my few belongings, and calling me a foul name which made me
cower away like a whipped child. I had nothing left--nothing. For a
week I had listened to no kind word, met with no kind act. I was upon
the street, alone, at night, purposeless, homeless, wandering aimlessly
from place to place, weakened by hunger, stupefied by despair. Men spoke
to me, and I fled their presence as though they were pestilence; women,
painted, shameless creatures, greeted me in passing as one of their own
class, and I sought to avoid them. Once I mustered sufficient courage to
ask help, but--but the man only laughed, and called me a foul name. I do
not know where I went, what the streets were called. I remember the
brilliantly lighted hotel: the theater crowds jostling me on the
sidewalks; the saloons where I saw women slipping in through side
entrances, the strains of piano music jingling forth on the night air.
I--I knew what it meant, and lingered, faint and trembling, before one
illuminated front, like a fascinated bird, until a drunken man, reeling
forth, laid hand on my shoulder with proposal of insult. I broke away
from him, and ran into the dark, every nerve tingling."

She shuddered, catching her breath sharply.

"Then--then I found myself out among the residences, where everything was
still and lonely, walking, walking, walking, every shadow appearing like
a ghost. I sat down to rest on the curbing, but a policeman drove me
away; once I crept into a darkened vestibule in a big apartment building,
but another discovered me there, and threatened to take me to the
station. I did n't care much by that time, yet finally he let me go, and