"He has to turn it in to Tom Beatty and the politicians"

Beatty! Where had he heard the name? Suddenly it came to him that
Beatty was the city boss, who had been eulogized by Mr. Plimpton!

"I have some good friends who will be glad to help you to get work--and
until you do get work. You will have to fight--but we all have to fight.
Will you try?"

"Sure, I'll try," she answered, in a low voice.

Her very tone of submission troubled him. And he had a feeling that, if
he had demanded, she would have acquiesced in anything.

"We'll talk it over to-morrow," he went on, clinging to his note of
optimism. "We'll find out what you can do easiest, to begin with."

"I might give music lessons," she suggested.

The remark increased his uneasiness, for he recognized in it a sure
symptom of disease--a relapse into what might almost have been called
levity, blindness to the supreme tragedy of her life which but a moment
before had shaken and appalled her. He shook his head bravely.

"I'm afraid that wouldn't do--at first."

She rose and went into the other room, returning in a few moments with a
work basket, from which she drew a soiled and unfinished piece of
embroidery.