“Go on,” I said, encouragingly.  “Do not fear I shall misunderstand.  I have been through the same mill.”

She gave me a quick glance of gratitude, pressing back a straggling strand of hair.

“But you were not a woman,” she insisted, “and could defend yourself from insult.  I endeavored so hard to discover some opening; I even sought domestic service, and was examined as though I was a horse on sale.  I walked the streets; I refused to despair, or permit myself to believe failure possible.  I went home at night, tired out, to a little rented room in Forty-Ninth Street, prayed as I used to when a child, cried myself to sleep, only to wake up the next morning determined to continue.  I was not weak then; I was as strong as any girl could be; I—­I fought it out to the very last,” her head suddenly drooping, “but—­but the end came just the same.  Perhaps I should never have hung on so long; perhaps it would have been better to have sent word to my mother, and asked help to go home.  But—­but I kept hoping to succeed, until it was too late.  I spent all the little money I had, and pawned my rings.  I had married against my mother’s wish.  I could not turn to her for help.  Oh, I was tempted; I think you must know what I mean!  You realize what temptation is; how it weakens, and conquers the soul?”

I closed my hand firmly over hers.

“Yes, I know.”

Her sensitive face brightened; her eyes clearing of mist.

“It is a comfort to speak with a gentleman again.  I—­I had almost begun to believe there were none left in the world.  You give me courage to go on, to acknowledge everything.  Mr. Craig, I was a soul tottering on the brink when I met you out yonder; a desperate, disheartened girl, tempted to the point of surrender.  I had lost hope, pride, all redeeming strength of womanhood.  I scarcely cared whether death, or dishonor, claimed me.  I do not know what fateful impulse moves me now, but I can look into your eyes without sense of shame, and confess this.  I was, in all essential truth, a woman of the street—­not yet lowered utterly to that level, not yet sacrificed, but with no moral strength left for resistance.  No fear, no horror.  Oh, God! it seems like some awful dream—­yet it was true, true!  I had ceased to struggle, to care; I had begun to drift; I had lost everything a woman prizes, even my faith in God.  I know you cannot comprehend what this means—­no man could.  But I want you to try.  Think what it would mean to your sister, to some pure friend in whom you have implicit trust.  Oh, I know what the world would say—­the well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed, sneering world—­but it is to you I appeal for some slight mercy.  You have also suffered, and grown weak, and, because you told me your story first, I dare now to tell mine.  I was a soul on the brink, and—­God forgive me!—­not afraid of the rocks below.  Like one stupefied I looked down, hated myself and laughed.”