r coming, dear old Ruggles; it is so lonely when
I come back here by myself."

"Why don't you get married?"

"Ah! I don't know. Perhaps I'm getting old working, and the men I
would like to marry don't care for me, and those that would I don't
like. I don't think I want really to marry any one, either."

As he shook hands at the door he said, "You ought to get married,
girlie. What a good, and true, and beautiful mother you would make for
a boy-child!"

The shooting of the door-hasp seemed to let go the flood-gates of her
heart. There was the great longing of her heart--to bear a boy-child.
"For joy that a man is born into the world" seemed vaguely ringing in
her ears. Like a deep-down spring surface-seeking, that old desire
welled up, the perfect reward and crown of valiant womanhood--and she
felt how good and tender and true a mother she could be; and as the
desolation of denial flooded her soul she threw herself on that sofa
made of empty cases, held the cushions to her, and cried--cried as if
her heart would break.

Being independent and alone in her own room, she could cry out her
lone cry without any one interfering with unwelcome comforting. Then,
pale-faced and red-eyed, she got up, the sobs still coming in little
gasps. She looked in the glass as she pushed the black hair back from
her blue-veined forehead. With one of those strange revelations of
reality that come to people in life when in solitude they look at
their own reflection in a mirror--she thought--spoke. "It is too
late--too late--for me to be the mother of a boy-child."

Then she went and set her alarm-clock to a quarter to seven in the
morning.

XVII

THE HOU-MEN OF THE DINGY CITY

How they call with different voices, these cities of men--from the
Maxim-gun-like rattle of New York, with its chorus of strenuous
steamers calling from the water, on over the gamut of different
capitals to Tokio, where the city voice is the tinkling of stilted
wooden shoes; not "Twinkle, twinkle, little star," but "Tinkle,
tinkle, little feet," go the small wooden shoes on the wide firmament
of pavement.

Most strident are the American cities; the most sweet-sounding are
those of Japan, except in those few streets raided by tram-cars.

What is the voice of London? Is it not the plod, plod, dumping plod of
the horses' hoofs and the jangling rattle of harness and bells, which
last we hardly hear, so close is the sound to our ears, like things we
can