party. The last I
declined.

When at last she was safely gone I locked the door and sprayed myself
with a preparation that is purifying. I was dispirited. There are
times when the world seems a weary place and certain of its people
beyond hope or pardon.

Last night I had a talk with Mrs. Mundy. She had seen the girl I
overheard speaking of an ill man who was being nursed by some one she
knew, and this girl had admitted that the "some one" was Etta Blake.
By another name she had been living in Lillie Pierce's world. For
the past two weeks, however, she had been away from it. When Mrs.
Mundy told me, something within gave way, and my head went down in my
arms, which fell upon the table, and I held them back no longer--the
aching tears which came at last without restraint. "The pity--oh,
the pity of it!" was all that I could say, and wisely Mrs. Mundy let
me cry it out--the pain and horror which were obsessing me. Hand on
my head, she smoothed my hair as does one's mother when her child is
greatly troubled, and for a while neither of us spoke.

I had feared for some time what I knew now was true, and it was not
for Etta alone that pity possessed me. Somehow, for all young
girlhood, for the weak and wayward, the bold and brazen, the
unprotected and helpless, I seemed somehow responsible, I and other
women like me, who were shielded from their temptations and ignorant
of the dangers to which they were exposed; and Etta was but one of
many who had gone wrong, perhaps, because I had not done right.
Something was so wrong with life when such things could happen, as
through all ages had happened; things which men said were impossible
to prevent. Perhaps they are, but women are different from men in
that they attempt the impossible. When they understand, this, too,
must be attempted--

After a while Mrs. Mundy began to tell me what she had learned. It
was an old story. The girl who told her of Etta was a friend of the
latter's and had been a waitress in the same restaurant in which Etta
was cashier. It was at this restaurant that Harrie met her.

"She was crazy to think he meant to marry her," the girl had told
Mrs. Mundy, "but at first she did think it. For some time he was
just nice to her, taking her to ride in his automobile, and out to
places where he was not apt to meet any one he knew, and then--then--"

"She doesn't blame Harrie, though. That is, at first she didn't.
She was that dead in love wi