an unintelligent woman, and mental effort of any sort was strange to
her. Throughout her entire life, her mind had never been truly awakened.
She had scrambled through Grammar School, and had followed it with five
years as saleswoman in a millinery store, in that district of San
Francisco known as the Mission, marrying George Page at twenty-three,
and up to that time well enough pleased with herself and her life.

But that was eight years ago. Now Emeline could see that she had
reached--more, she had passed--her prime. She began to see that the
moods of those early years, however violent and changing, had been fed
upon secret springs of hope, hope vague and baseless enough, but strong
to colour a girl's life with all the brightness of a thousand dawns.
There had been rare potentialities in those days, anything might happen,
something _would_ happen. The little Emeline Cox, moving between the
dreary discomfort of home and the hated routine of school, might
surprise all these dull seniors and school-mates some day! She might
become an actress, she might become a great singer, she might make a
brilliant marriage.

As she grew older and grew prettier, these vague, bright dreams
strengthened. Emeline's mother was an overworked and shrill-voiced
woman, whose personality drove from the Shotwell Street house whatever
small comfort poverty and overcrowding and dirt left in it. She had no
personal message for Emeline. The older woman had never learned the care
of herself, her children, her husband, or her house. She had naturally
nothing to teach her daughter. Emeline's father occasionally thundered a
furious warning to his daughters as to certain primitive moral laws. He
did not tell Emeline and her sisters why they might some day consent to
abandon the path of virtue, nor when, nor how. He never dreamed of
winning their affection and confidence, or of selecting their friends,