s of fashion--she
might be wandering again, sick at heart, about the great city, knocking
at the side doors of variety shows for any engagement that would give her
a pittance of a few dollars a week. How long had Carmen waited on the
social outskirts; and now she had come into her kingdom, was she anything
but a tinsel queen? Even Henderson, the great Henderson, did the friends
of his youth respect him? had he public esteem? Carmen used to cut out
the newspaper paragraphs that extolled Henderson's domestic virtue and
his generosity to his family, and show them to her lord, with a queer
smile on her face. Miss Tavish, in the nervous consciousness of fleeting
years, was she not still waiting, dashing here and there like a bird in a
net for the sort of freedom, audacious as she was, that seemed denied
her? She was still beautiful, everybody said, and she was sought and
flattered, because she was always merry and good-natured. Why should Van
Dam, speaking of women, say that there were horses that had been set up,
and checked up and trained, that held their heads in an aristocratic
fashion, moved elegantly, and showed style, long after the spirit had
gone out of them? And Jack himself, happily married, with a comfortable
income, why was life getting flat to him? What sort of career was it
that needed the aid of Carmen and the serpentine dancer? And why not,
since it is absolutely necessary that the world should be amused?

We are in no other world when we enter the mean tenement in the alley off
Rivington Street. Here also is the life of the town. The room is small,
but it contains a cook-stove, a chest of drawers, a small table, a couple
of chairs, and two narrow beds. On the top of the chest are a
looking-glass, some toilet articles, and bottles of medicine. The cracked
walls are bare and not clean. In one of the beds are two children,
sleeping soundly, and on the foot of it is a middle-aged woman, in a
soiled woolen gown with a thin figured shawl drawn about her shoulders, a
dirty cap half concealing her frowzy hair; she looks tired and worn and
sleepy. On the other bed lies a girl of twenty years, a woman in
experience. The kerosene lamp on the stand at the head of the bed casts a
spectral light on her flushed face, and the thin arms that are restlessly
thrown outside the cover. By the bedside sits the doctor, patient,
silent, and watchful. The doctor puts her hand caressingly on that of the
girl. It is hot and dry. The g