coughed a little.

"Why don't you put up your sewing for to-night and go to bed,
child?" said her mother.

"I might as well sit here and sew as go to bed and lie there. I
shouldn't sleep," replied Maria, with the gentlest sadness
conceivable. There was in it no shadow of complaining. Of late years
all the fire of resistance had seemed to die out in the girl. She
was unfailingly sweet, but nerveless. Often when she raised a hand
it seemed as if she could not even let it fall, as if it must remain
poised by some curious inertia. Still, she went to the shop every
day and did her work faithfully. She pasted linings in shoes, and
her slender little fingers used to fly as if they were driven by
some more subtle machine than any in the factory. Often Maria felt
vaguely as if she were in the grasp of some mighty machine worked by
a mighty operator; she felt, as she pasted the linings, as if she
herself were also a part of some monstrous scheme of work under
greater hands than hers, and there was never any getting back of it.
And always with it all there was that ceaseless, helpless,
bewildered longing for something, she was afraid to think what,
which often saps the strength and life of a young girl. Maria had
never had a lover in her life; she had not even good comrades among
young men, as her sister had. No man at that time would have ever
looked twice at her, unless he had fallen in love with her, and had
been disposed to pick her up and carry her along on the hard road
upon which they fared together. Maria was half fed in every sense;
she had not enough nourishing food for her body, nor love for her
heart, nor exercise for her brain. She had no time to read, as she
was forced to sew when out of the shop if she would have anything to
wear. When at last she went up-stairs to bed, before Abby returned,
she sat down by her window, and leaned her little, peaked chin on
the sill and looked out. The stars were unusually bright for a
summer night; the whole sky seemed filled with a constantly
augmenting host of them. The scent of tobacco came to her from
below. To the lonely girl the stars and the scent of the tobacco
served as stimulants; she formed a forcible wish. "I wish," she
muttered to herself, "that I was either an angel or a man." Then
the next minute she chided herself for her wickedness. A great wave
of love for God, and remorse for impatience and melancholy in her
earthly lot, swept over her. She knelt down beside