hours daily, she stood behind a counter. She spent her other
waking hours in obligatory menial labors: cooking her own scant
meals over the gas; washing and ironing, for the sake of that
neat appearance which was required of her by those in authority
at the Emporium--yet, more especially, necessary for her own
self-respect. With a mind keen and earnest, she contrived some
solace from reading and studying, since the free library gave her
this opportunity. So, though engaged in stultifying occupation
through most of her hours, she was able to find food for mental
growth. Even, in the last year, she had reached a point of
development whereat she began to study seriously her own position
in the world's economy, to meditate on a method of bettering it.
Under this impulse, hope mounted high in her heart. Ambition was
born. By candid comparison of herself with others about her, she
realized the fact that she possessed an intelligence beyond the
average. The training by her father, too, had been of a superior
kind. There was as well, at the back vaguely, the feeling of
particular self-respect that belongs inevitably to the possessor
of good blood. Finally, she demurely enjoyed a modest
appreciation of her own physical advantages. In short, she had
beauty, brains and breeding. Three things of chief importance to
any woman--though there be many minds as to which may be chief
among the three.

I have said nothing specific thus far as to the outer being of
Mary Turner--except as to filmed eyes and a huddled form. But,
in a happier situation, the girl were winning enough. Indeed,
more! She was one of those that possess an harmonious beauty,
with, too, the penetrant charm that springs from the mind, with
the added graces born of the spirit. Just now, as she sat, a