ity removed, although Gladys, if the truth
were told, was not so bad, and she got some good advice from the
answers in response to her letters, which restrained her. Still, her
view of everything was different. She was different. Black was not as
black to her as to Maria; a spade was not so truly a spade. She
recognized immorality as a fact, but it did not seem to her of so
much importance. In one sense she was more innocent even than Maria,
for she had never felt the true living clutch of vice on her soul,
even in imagination; she could not. The devil to her was not of
enough consequence to enable her to sin in the truest sense of the
word. All her family were immoral, and a constant living in an
atmosphere of immorality may, in one sense, make one incapable of
spiritual sin. One needs to fully sense a sin in order to actually
commit it. Gladys could hardly sense sin as Maria could. Still she
had a sense of proud virtue after reading the paragraphs of good
advice in reply to her letters to the paper, and she felt that it
placed her nearer Maria's level. On the occasion when Maria met her
reading the paper, she even spoke.

"Hullo, M'ria!" said she.

"Good-evening," Maria replied, politely and haughtily.

But Gladys did not seem to notice the haughtiness. She pressed close
to Maria.

"Say!" said she.

"What?" asked Maria.

"Ain't you ever goin' to--?"

"No, I am not," replied Maria, deadly pale, and trembling from head
to foot.

"Why don't you write to this paper and ask what you had better do?"
said Gladys. "It's an awful good plan. You do git awful good advice."

"I don't wish to," replied Maria, trying to pass, but Gladys stood in
her way.

"But say, M'ria, you be in an awful box," said she. "You can't never
marry nobody else without you get locked up, you know."

"I don't want to," Maria said, shortly.

"Mebbe you will."

"I never shall."

"Well, if you do, you had better write to this paper, then you can
find out just what to do. It won't tell you to do nothin' wrong, and
it's awful sensible. Say, M'ria."

"Well, what?"

"I 'ain't never told a living soul, and I never shall, but I don't
see what you are goin' to do if either you or him wants to git
married to anybody else."

"I am not worrying about getting married," said Maria. This time she
pushed past Gladys. Her knees fairly knocked together.

Gladys looked at her with sympathy and the old little-girl love and
adoration. "Well, don't