she cried. "Oh, why don't you let me die!"

I drew a chair close to the cot and sat down by it. For a while I said
nothing. Things long locked within her, long held back, were
struggling for utterance. In the days she had been with us her silence
had been unbroken, but gradually something bitter and rebellious had
died out of her face, and into it had come a haunted, hunted look, and
yet she would not talk. Until she was ready to speak we knew it was
best to say nothing to her of days that were past, or of those that
were to come.

Mrs. Mundy had known her before she came to Scarborough Square. In a
ward of one of the city's hospitals, where her baby was born, she had
found her alone, deserted, and waiting her time. Two days after its
birth the baby died.

When she left the hospital there was nowhere for her to go. She had
lived in a city but a short time and knew little of its life, and yet
she must work. Mrs. Mundy got a room for her, then a place in a store,
and she did well, kept to herself, but somebody who knew her story saw
her, told the proprietor, and he turned her off. He couldn't keep
girls like that, he said. It would injure his business. Later, she
got in an office. She had learned at night to do typewriting, and
there one of the men was kind to her, began to give her a little
pleasure every now and then. She was young. It was dreary where she
lived, and she craved a bit of brightness. One night he took her to
what she found was--oh, worse than where she has since lived, for it
pretended to be respectable.

"She was terribly afraid of men. It wasn't put on; it was real. I