ense of peace stealing over her. She
was actually beginning to feel contented. It was a chance worth
taking, since things could never be worse. And then there was that
thing in her bag. Presently a woman came to sit quite close to her
with a squalling infant in her arms and another standing at her knee.
She was a picture of anxiety and helplessness. But after a time a man
came, bearing an old cheap suit-case tied up with clothes-line, who
spoke in a foreign tongue as the woman sighed with relief and a smile
came over her face.

Yes! That was it! The coming of the man had solved all fears and
doubts! There was security in his care and protection. With a catch in
her breathing the girl's thoughts flew over vast unknown expanses and
went to that other man who was awaiting her. Her vivid imagination
presented him like some strange being appearing before her under forms
that kept changing. The sound of his voice was a mystery to her and
she had not the slightest idea of his appearance. That advertisement
stated that he was young and the first letter had hinted that he
possessed fair looks. Yet moments came in which the mere idea of him
was terrifying, and this, in swiftly changing moods, changed to forms
that seemed to bring her peace, a surcease of hunger and cold, of
unavailing toil, of carking fear of the morrow.

At times she would look about her, and the surroundings would become
blurred, as if she had been weeping. The hastening people moved as if
through a heavy mist and the announcer's voice, at intervals, boomed
out loudly and called names that suggested nothing to her. Again her
vision might clear and she would notice little trivial things, a
bewildered woman dragging a pup that was most unwilling, a child
hauling a bag too heavy for him, a big negro with thumbs in the
armholes of his vest, yawning ponderously. For the hundredth time she
looked at the big clock and found that she still had over an hour to
wait for her train. Again she lost sight of the ever-changing throngs,
of the massive structure in which she seemed to be lost, and the roar
of the traffic faded away in the long backward turning of her brain,
delving into the past. There was the first timid yet hopeful coming to
the big city and the discovery that a fair high-school education, with
some knowledge of sewing and fancywork, was but poor merchandise to
exchange for a living. Her abundance of good looks, at that time, had
proved nothing but a hindra