's strange how
I've always been hoping, an' now how I don't care.'

"Then Charley told her she'd better go home with him: he'd got a
comfortable, nice place, an' he'd never bother her. They'd talked it
over many a time, but she'd held off, always thinking she might find her
folks.

"Marriage didn't mean anything to either of them. How could it, coming
up the way they had? though she'd never been like the other girls. You
can't think how they could be the heathen they were? Remember what
you've seen an' heard in this very place, an' then remember that ten
years ago, even, a decent man or woman didn't dare go up these alleys
even by daylight, an' the two or three missionaries were in danger of
their lives; an' you'll see how much chance they'd had of learning.

"Nan wasn't sixteen then, an' she didn't think ahead, though if she had
likely she would have done the same. She had her choice, but she'd
always known Charley, an' so it ended that way.

"Then came a long time when my own troubles were thick, an' I went off
to the country an' lost sight of her. It was two years before I came
back, an' then everything was changed. All that set I'd known seemed to
have gone to the bad together--some in prison and some dead. Jerry was
out then, an' we were married an' began together in the little room down
the street; an' now I thought often of Nan. They told me Charley was
drinkin' himself to death, an' that she was at the theatre still, an'
kept things goin' with her money, an' that he knocked her round, when he
was out of his head, the worst way. It wasn't long before I went to her.
She looked so beautiful you wouldn't think a fiend could want to hurt
her, an' her eyes had just the look of that picture. I told her how I
had turned about, an' how happy we both were, in spite of hard times an'
little work; but she listened like one in a dream, an' I knew enough to
see that I should have to tell her many times before she would
understand or care. But she seemed so frail I couldn't bear to leave her
so. An' the worst of it was, that she'd begun to wish Charley would
marry her, an' he thought it was all nonsense, an' swore at her if she
said a word about it. She'd been gettin' more and more sensible, an'
he'd just been goin' the other way, but she kept her old fondness for
him. I said nothing then, but one day I found her cryin', an' her arm so
she could hardly move it; an' it came out he'd knocked her down, an'
told her she could