me from going
there," pointing through the window down to the river.

"I'd had a lot of trouble,--oh, a terrible lot of trouble,--and it
seemed as if there wasn't any place for me; and I walked down to the
edge of the river up there at the end of East Fourteenth Street, and
something stopped me just when I was ready to jump in. Why I didn't, I
don't know," and the girl turned a stony face to the window.

"Why, it was hope and renewed courage, of course!" I replied quickly.
"Everybody gets blue spells--when one is down on one's luck."

Eunice shook her head. "No, it wasn't hope. It was because I was
afraid--it was because I'm a coward. I'm too much of a coward to live,
and I'm too much of a coward to die. You never felt as I do. You
couldn't. I've lost my grip on everything. Everything's gone against me,
and it's too late now for things to change. You don't know--_you don't
know_, you and Bessie. If you did, you'd see how useless all your
kindness is, in trying to get me to brace up. I've tried--my God! I have
tried to feel that there's a life before me, but I can't--I can't.
Sometimes, maybe for a minute, I'll forget what's gone by, and then the
next minute the memory of it all comes back with a fearful stab. There
is something that won't let me forget."

"Hush! Eunice; don't talk so loud," I whispered as her passionate voice
rose above the hum of the other girls in a far portion of the room.

"I tell you it's no use--it's no use. I've lost my grip on things, and I
can never catch hold again. I thought, maybe, when I started out with
you and Bessie, and got to working again, there'd be a change. But there
isn't any difference now from--from the night I went into that dormitory
first. Now with you it would be different. What's happened to me might,
maybe, happen to you; but you could fight it down. There's something
inside of you that's stronger than anything that can hurt you from the
outside. Most girls are that way. They get hurt--and hurt bad, and they
cry a lot at the time and are miserable and unhappy; but after a while
they succeed in picking themselves up, and are in the end as good,
sometimes better, than ever. They forget in a little while all about it,
and wind up by marrying some man who is really in love with them, and
they are as happy as if nothing had ever happened."

I looked at the occupant of cot No. 11 with mingled feelings of pity and
amazement--pity for the hopelessness of her case, now more ap