lously
close to contented companioning with crime.

The best evidence of the fact that Mary Turner's soul was not fatally
soiled must be found in the fact that still, at the expiration of her
sentence, she was fully resolved to live straight, as the saying is
which she had quoted to Gilder. This, too, in the face of sure knowledge
as to the difficulties that would beset the effort, and in the face of
the temptations offered to follow an easier path.

There was, for example, Aggie Lynch, a fellow convict, with whom she
had a slight degree of acquaintance, nothing more. This young woman, a
criminal by training, offered allurements of illegitimate employment in
the outer world when they should be free. Mary endured the companionship
with this prisoner because a sixth sense proclaimed the fact that here
was one unmoral, rather than immoral--and the difference is mighty. For
that reason, Aggie Lynch was not actively offensive, as were most of the
others. She was a dainty little blonde, with a baby face, in which were
set two light-blue eyes, of a sort to widen often in demure wonder over
most things in a surprising and naughty world. She had been convicted of
blackmail, and she made no pretense even of innocence. Instead, she was
inclined to boast over her ability to bamboozle men at her will. She
was a natural actress of the ingenue role, and in that pose she could
unfailingly beguile the heart of the wisest of worldly men.

Perhaps, the very keen student of physiognomy might have discovered
grounds for suspecting her demureness by reason of the thick, level
brows that cast a shadow on the bland innocence of her face. For the
rest, she possessed a knack of rather harmless perversity, a fair
smattering of grammar and spelling, and a lively sense of humor within
her own limitations, with a particularly small intelligence in other
directions. Her one art was histrionics of the kind that made an
individual appeal. In such, she was inimitable. She had been reared in a
criminal family, which must excuse much. Long ago, she had lost track
of her father; her mother she had never known. Her one relation was a
brother of high standing as a pickpocket. One principal reason of her
success in leading on men to make fools of themselves over her, to their
everlasting regret afterward, lay in the fact that, in spite of all the
gross irregularities of her life, she remained chaste. She deserved no
credit for such restraint, since it was a