e did not find that she
cared very much to do them. But every day she grew stronger in her
desire to really understand.

It was now no longer, even in the daylight, the rougher men that these
two learned to know in their wanderings, and for Melanctha the better
classes were now a little higher. It was no longer express agents
and clerks that she learned to know, but men in business, commercial
travelers, and even men above these, and Jane and she would talk and
walk and laugh and escape from them all very often. It was still the
same, the knowing of them and the always just escaping, only now for
Melanctha somehow it was different, for though it was always the same
thing that happened it had a different flavor, for now Melanctha was
with a woman who had wisdom, and dimly she began to see what it was
that she should understand.

It was not from the men that Melanctha learned her wisdom. It
was always Jane Harden herself who was making Melanctha begin to
understand.

Jane was a roughened woman. She had power and she liked to use it, she
had much white blood and that made her see clear, she liked drinking
and that made her reckless. Her white blood was strong in her and
she had grit and endurance and a vital courage. She was always game,
however much she was in trouble. She liked Melanctha Herbert for the
things that she had like her, and then Melanctha was young, and
she had sweetness, and a way of listening with intelligence and
sympathetic interest, to the stories that Jane Harden often told out
of her experience.

Jane grew always fonder of Melanctha. Soon they began to wander,
more to be together than to see men and learn their various ways of
working. Then they began not to wander, and Melanctha would spend long
hours with Jane in her room, sitting at her feet and listening to her
stories, and feeling her strength and the power of her affection, and
slowly she began to see clear before her one certain way that would be
sure to lead to wisdom.

Before the end came, the end of the two years in which Melanctha spent
all her time when she was not at school or in her home, with Jane
Harden, before these two years were finished, Melanctha had come to
see very clear, and she had come to be very certain, what it is that
gives the world its wisdom.

Jane Harden always had a little money and she had a room in the lower
part of the town. Jane had once taught in a colored school. She
had had to leave that too on account