asked dully.

Felicity sat and studied her--pondered her. Felicity's face was harder
than Cecille had ever seen it before, and infinitely more tender.

"I hate to leave you," she said. "I wouldn't mind so much if I could
_get_ you. If I could once get it through my nut what you're waiting
for--what you expect there's going to be in it for you--it wouldn't be so
hard. But I can't."

"I don't know what you mean." She had caught Cecille's interest now.

"Neither do I," she admitted. "Not exactly. That's why I'm talking.
That's what I'm trying to get at." Her voice became half-absent-minded,
ruminative, as though she were thinking aloud.

"They caught me young, too," she murmured. "Oh, that was a long time
ago. Not measured in years, measured in time. There's a difference.

"A mission-school got hold of me. Good women, not brainless velvet pets
from the younger set, looking for a new sensation. Good women, sincere
women that wanted to help. Well, I was sincere, too. I wanted to be
helped. I told 'em so; but I also told 'em I doubted if they could do
much.

"I'd begun to get wise to one thing that early. I was seventeen, but I'd
begun to see that all you got in this world was what you helped yourself
to. But I was willing to try; I'd try anything once. If learning things
out of a book would do it; if studying how to shoot the right language in
the right spot and how to live sweet and pretty, inside and out, was
going to get me what I wanted, well and good. Also, soft! There
couldn't be any easier way, several well-known draymas to the contrary.
So I gave 'em a chance.

"'Show me,' I said. And I stuck it out two years."

She stared at the ceiling, her eyes sardonic with reminiscence.

"Two years. Get that. Not two days, nor two weeks, nor two months. Two
_years_. And did I see myself at the end of that time any nearer what I
was after? I hadn't slacked, mind you. I'd worked! Everything they'd
ever spilled I'd sopped up like a sponge. And did it finally bring me a
chance? Sure it did, believe you me. A whiskey drummer with false
teeth!"

Here she laughed, a slurring note or two.

"That cured me, I guess. I did stay a little longer, but I knew! I knew
I was through. I stayed another week, and then I went to the mat.

"'Show me,' I said again. That was what I wanted, a show-down. And did
they? Could they? Bah! They talked! They told me I was making
wonderful progress.

"'