"that's all there is to it. Give them a
living chance to get enough food to eat, and a decent room to sleep in,
and shoes that will keep their feet off the pavement winter mornings. Do
you think that any girl wants to steal? Do you think that any girl wants
to risk----?"

By this time, however, Gilder had regained his powers of speech, and he
interrupted stormily.

"And is this what you have taken up my time for? You want to make a
maudlin plea for guilty, dishonest girls, when I thought you really
meant to bring me facts."

Nevertheless, Mary went on with her arraignment uncompromisingly. There
was a strange, compelling energy in her inflections that penetrated even
the pachydermatous officer, so that, though he thought her raving, he
let her rave on, which was not at all his habit of conduct, and did
indeed surprise him mightily. As for Gilder, he felt helpless in some
puzzling fashion that was totally foreign to his ordinary self. He was
still glowing with wrath over the method by which he had been victimized
into giving the girl a hearing. Yet, despite his chagrin, he realized
that he could not send her from him forthwith. By some inexplicable
spell she bound him impotent.

"We work nine hours a day," the quiet voice went on, a curious pathos
in the rich timbre of it; "nine hours a day, for six days in the week.
That's a fact, isn't it? And the trouble is, an honest girl can't live
on six dollars a week. She can't do it, and buy food and clothes, and
pay room-rent and carfare. That's another fact, isn't it?"

Mary regarded the owner of the store with grave questioning in her
violet eyes. Under the urgency of emotion, color crept into the pallid
cheeks, and now her face was very beautiful--so beautiful, indeed, that
for a little the charm of its loveliness caught the man's gaze, and he
watched her with a new respect, born of appreciation for her feminine
delightfulness. The impression was far too brief. Gilder was not given
to esthetic raptures over women. Always, the business instinct was the
dominant. So, after the short period of amazed admiration over such
unexpected winsomeness, his thoughts flew back angrily to the matters
whereof she spoke so ridiculously.

"I don't care to discuss these things," he declared peremptorily, as the
girl remained silent for a moment.

"And I have no wish to discuss anything," Mary returned evenly. "I
only want to give you what you asked for--facts." A faint smile of
remi