in there and found the home paper. Chicago had given her nothing but
rebuffs that day, and in desperation, just because she must go
somewhere, and did not want to go back to her boarding-place, she had
hunted out the city library. It was when walking listlessly about in
the big reading-room it had occurred to her that perhaps she could
find the paper from home; and after that when things were their worst,
when her throat grew tight and her eyes dim, she could always comfort
herself by saying: "After a while I'll run down and look at the paper."

But to-night it had failed her. It was not the paper from home
to-night; it was just a newspaper. It did not inspire the belief
that things would be better to-morrow, that it must all come right
soon. It left her as she had come---heavy with the consciousness
that in her purse was eleven dollars, and that that was every cent
she had in the whole world.

It was hard to hold back the tears as she dwelt upon the fact that
it was very little she had asked of Chicago. She had asked only a
chance to do the work for which she was trained, in order that she
might go to the art classes at night. She had read in the papers of
that mighty young city of the Middle West--the heart of the
continent--of its brawn and its brain and its grit. She had supposed
that Chicago, of all places, would appreciate what she wanted to do.
The day she drew her hard-earned one hundred dollars from the bank
in Denver--how the sun had shone that day in Denver, how clear the
sky had been, and how bracing the air!--she had quite taken it for
granted that her future was assured. And now, after tasting for
three weeks the cruelty of indifference, she looked back to those
visions with a hard little smile.