eyes wavered, after a
moment, and fell.

"My gentleman fren' says marriage is wrong," said Ella. "He knows a lot.
And he has _so_ much money"--she made a wide gesture with her hands--"I
can have a nice place ter live, Miss Rose-Marie, an' pretty clothes.
Lookit Ma; she's married an' she ain't got nothin'! I can have coats an'
hats an'--"

Rose-Marie touched Ella's hand, timidly, with her cool fingers.

"But you'll have to pay for them, Ella," she said. "Think, dear; will the
coats and hats be worth the price that you'll have to pay? Will they be
worth the price of self-respect--will they be worth the price of
honourable wifehood and--motherhood? Will the pretty clothes, Ella, make
it easier for you to look into the face of some other woman--who has kept
straight? Will they?"

Ella raised her eyes and, in their suddenly vague expression, Rose-Marie
saw a glimmering of the faded, crushed mother. She hurried on.

"What kind of a chap is this gentleman friend," she raged, "to ask so
much of you, dear? Is there--is there any reason why he can't marry you?
Is he tied to some one else?"

All at once Ella was sobbing, with gusty, defiant sobs.

"Not as far as I've heard of, there ain't nobody else," she sobbed. "I
don't know much about him, Miss Rose-Marie. Jim gimme a knockdown ter
him, one night, in a dance-hall. I thought he was all right--Jim said he
was ... An' he said he loved me, an'"--wildly--"I love him, too! An' I
hate it all, here, except Lily--"

Rose-Marie, thinking rapidly, seized her advantage.

"Will going away with him," she asked steadily, "be worth never seeing
Lily again? For you wouldn't be able to see her again--you wouldn't feel
able to touch her, you know, if your hands weren't--clean. You bought
her a religious picture, Ella, and a flower. Why? Because you know, in
your heart, that she's aware of religion and beauty and sweetness! Going
away with this man, Ella, will separate you from Lily, just as
completely as an ocean--flowing between the two of you--would make a
separation! And all of your life you'll have to know that she's
suffering somewhere, perhaps; that maybe somebody's hurting her--that
her dresses are dirty and her hair isn't combed! Every time you hear a
little child crying you'll think of Lily--who can't cry aloud. Every
time a pair of blue eyes look into your face you'll think of her
eyes--that can't see. Will going away with him be worth never knowing,
Ella, whether she's aliv