Have you heard of the Women?"

"Yes."

"Move your chair a little further away from me." She paused. Her
voice, without losing its steadiness, fell to its lowest tones."
_I_ was once of those women," she said, quietly.

Grace sprang to her feet with a faint cry. She stood
petrified--incapable of uttering a word.

"_I_ have been in a Refuge," pursued the sweet, sad voice of the
other woman." _I_ have been in a Prison. Do you still wish to be
my friend? Do you still insist on sitting close by me and taking
my hand?" She waited for a reply, and no reply came. "You see you
were wrong," she went on, gently, "when you called me cruel--and
I was right when I told you I was kind."

At that appeal Grace composed herself, and spoke. "I don't wish
to offend you--" she began, confusedly.

Mercy Merrick stopped her there.

"You don't offend me," she said, without the faintest note of
displeasure in her tone. "I am accustomed to stand in the pillory
of my own past life. I sometimes ask myself if it was all my
fault. I sometimes wonder if Society had no duties toward me when
I was a child selling matches in the street--when I was a
hard-working girl fainting at my needle for want of food." Her
voice faltered a little for the first time as it pronounced those