clothes look
decent, when they aren't! She must be something like me--only
much worse off." And then she realized that she was gazing at
her own image, was pitying her own self. The room she and Mrs.
Tucker and the old scrubwoman occupied was so dark, even with
its one little gas jet lighted, that she was able to get only
a faint look at herself in the little cracked and water-marked
mirror over its filthy washstand--filthy because the dirt was so
ground in that only floods of water and bars of soap could have
cleaned down to its original surface. She was having a clear
look at herself for the first time in three months.

She shrank in horror, yet gazed on fascinated. Why, her
physical charm had gone gone, leaving hardly a trace! Those
dull, hollow eyes--that thin and almost ghastly face--the
emaciated form--the once attractive hair now looking poor and
stringy because it could not be washed properly--above all, the
sad, bitter expression about the mouth. Those pale lips! Her
lips had been from childhood one of her conspicuous and most
tempting beauties; and as the sex side of her nature had
developed they had bloomed into wonderful freshness and
vividness of form and color. Now----

Those pale, pale lips! They seemed to form a sort of climax of
tragedy to the melancholy of her face. She gazed on and on.
She noted every detail. How she had fallen! Indeed, a fallen
woman! These others had been born to the conditions that were
destroying her; they were no worse off, in many cases better
off. But she, born to comfort and custom of intelligent
educated associations and associates----

A fallen woman!

Honest work! Even if it were true that this honest work was a
sort of probation through which one rose to better things--even
if this were true, could it be denied that only a few at best
could rise, that the most--including all the sensitive, and
most of the children--must wallow on, must perish? Oh, the
lies, the lies about honest work!

Rosa Mohr, a girl of her own age who worked in the same room,
joined her. "Admiring yourself?" she said laughing. "Well, I
don't blame you. You _are_ pretty."

Susan at first thought Rosa was mocking her. But the tone and
expression were sincere.

"It won't last long," Rosa went on. "I wasn't so bad myself
when I quit the high school and took a job because father lost
his business and his health. He got in the way of one of those
trusts. So of course they