gets over things. I feel awful inside and sick and my eyes burn. But I
can't cry."

"You're too young for that."

"Oh, in some ways I'm young; again, I'm not. I hate everybody this
evening."

"What's the matter? Has Nellie deserted you?"

"She? Not much. I had to tell her to go"--this with a joyless little
laugh--"she quit work and wouldn't behave herself. So now I'm going on
alone." "And you won't go home?"

"Never in the world," she said with almost fierce energy; then some thought
made her laugh in the same way as before. Howard decided that she had not
told him everything about her home life, even though she had rattled on as
if there were nothing to conceal. He sat watching her, she looking straight
before her, her small bare hands clasped in her lap. He was pitying her
keenly--this child, at once stunted and abnormally developed, this stray
from one of the classes that keeps their women sheltered; and here she was
adrift, without any of those resources of experience which assist the girls
of the tenements.

Her features were small, sensitive, regular. Her eyes were brown with lines
of reddish gold raying from the pupils. Her chin and mouth were firm
enough, yet suggested weakness through the passions. Her clear skin had the
glow of youth and health upon its smooth surface. She was certainly
beautiful and she certainly had magnetism.