“I didn’t mean to let go like that.  I wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t said—­you were sorry.  You’ve no cause to be sorry for me.  I’m not worth it.  I was crazy—­to care as I cared.  I ought to have known gentlemen like him don’t marry girls like me, but I didn’t have the strength to—­to make him leave me, or to go away myself.  And then one day he told me it had to be a choice between him and the baby.  He seemed to hate the sight of the baby.  He said I must send it away.”  Swaying slightly, she caught herself against the side of the table close to her, and again I waited.  “She’s a delicate little thing, and I couldn’t put her in a place where I didn’t know how they’d treat her.  He told me it had to be one or the other—­and I’d rather he’d killed me than made me say which one.  But I couldn’t give the baby up.  She needed me.”

“And then—­” My voice, too, was low.

“He got mad and went away.  I thought I hated him, but I can’t hate him.  I’ve tried and I can’t.  When he came back and found where I was living—­” A long, low shiver came from the twisting lips.  “About five weeks ago I moved to where he was taken sick.  And now—­now he has gone home again and I—­” She got up as if the torment of her soul made it impossible for her to sit still, and again she faced me.  “It doesn’t matter what becomes of me.  What do rich people and good people and people who could change things care about us?  And neither do they care what we think of them, and specially of good women.  Do you suppose we think you really believe in the Christ who did not stone us?  We don’t.  We laugh at most Christians, spit at them.  We know you don’t believe in Him or you’d remember what He said.”

She turned sharply.  Mrs. Mundy with Kitty behind her was at the door.  The latter hesitated, and, seeing it, Etta nodded to her.  “Come in.  I won’t hurt you.  You need not be afraid.”

Speaking first to Etta, Kitty kissed me, and I saw she had come up-stairs because she, too, was wondering if there was something she could do.  Kitty is no longer the child she once was.  She is going, some day, to be a brave and big and splendid woman.  At the window she sat down, and as though she were not in the room Etta turned toward me.

“You said just now you wanted to help.  Wanting won’t do that!” She snapped her fingers.  “You’ve got to stop wanting and will to do something.  Men laugh at the laws men make, but we don’t blame men like we blame women who let their men be bad and then smile on them, marry them, and pretend they do not know.  They do not want to know.  If you made men pay the price you make us pay, the world would be a safer place to live in.  Men don’t do what women won’t stand for.”

Kitty leaned forward, and Etta, with twisting hands, looked at her and then at Mrs. Mundy and then at me, and in her eyes was piteous appeal.  “There’s no chance for me, but I’ve got a little baby girl.  What’s going to become of her?  In God’s name, can’t you do something to make good women understand?  Make them know the awfulness—­awfulness—­”