finished I'll pick you up and carry you to
your room, and I am not sure but I will kiss you over and over. What is
it you want to tell me, Ruth?"

She sat up panting and pushed back the heavy coils of hair.

"I've got to begin away at the beginning to make you see," she said.
"The first thing I can remember is a small, such a small room, and
mother sewing and sometimes a man I called father. He was like Henry
Jameson made over tall and smooth, and more, oh, much more heartless! He
was gone long at a time, and always we had most to eat, and went oftener
to the parks, and were happiest with him away. When I was big enough to
understand, mother told me that she had met him and cared for him when
she was an inexperienced girl. She must have been very, very young, for
she was only a girl as I first remember her, and oh! so lovely, but
with the saddest face I ever saw. She said she had a good home and every
luxury, and her parents adored her; but they knew life and men, and they
would not allow him in their home, and so she left it with him, and he
married her and tried to force them to accept him, and they would not.
At first she bore it. Later she found him out, and appealed to them,
but they were away or would not forgive, and she was a proud thing, and
would not beg more after she had said she was wrong, and would they take
her back.

"I grew up and we were girls together. We embroidered, and I drew, and
sometimes we had little treats and good times, and my father did not
come often, and we got along the best we could. Always it was worse
on her, because she was not so strong as I, and her heart was secretly
breaking for her mother, and she was afraid he would come back any
hour. She was tortured that she could not educate me more than to put
me through the high school. She wore herself out doing that, but she was
wild for me to be reared and trained right. So every day she crouched
over delicate laces and embroidery, and before and after school I
carried it and got more, and in vacation we worked together. But living
grew higher, and she became ill, and could not work, and I hadn't her
skill, and the drawings didn't bring much, and I'd no tools----"

"Ruth, for mercy sake let me take you in my arms. If you've got to tell
this to find peace, let me hold you while you do it."

"Never again," said the Girl. "You won't want to in a minute. You must
hear this, because I can't bear it any longer, and it isn't fair to let