say. He had never before
heard anything like this from her.

"Can't anybody help me out of it?" she said quietly.

"Who? How? ... Do you mean--"

"Yes, I mean it! I mean it! I--"

And suddenly she broke down, in a strange, stammering, tearless
way, opening the dry flood-gates over which rattled an avalanche of
words--bitter, breathless phrases rushing brokenly from lips that shrank
as they formed them.

Plank sat inert, the corroding echo of the words clattering in his ears.
And after a while he heard his own altered voice sounding persistently
in repetition:

"Don't say those things, Leila; don't tell me such things."

"Why? Don't you care?"

"Yes, yes, I care; but I can't do anything! I have no business to
hear--to see you this way."

"To whom can I speak, then, if I can not speak to you? To whom can I
turn? Where am I to turn, in all the world?"

"I don't know," he said fearfully; "the only way is to go on."

"What else have I done? What else am I doing?" she cried. "Go on? Am I
not trudging on and on through life, dragging the horror of it behind
me through the mud, except when the horror drags me? To whom am I to
turn--to other beasts like him?--sitting patiently around, grinning and
slavering, awaiting their turn when the horror of it crushes me to the
mud?"

She stretched out a rounded, quivering arm, and laid the small fingers
of the left hand on its flawless contour. "Look!" she said, exasperated,
"I am young yet; the horror has not yet corrupted the youth in me. I am
fashioned for some reason, am I not?--for some purpose, some happiness.
I am not bad; I am human. What poison has soaked into me can be
eliminated. I tell you, no woman is capable of being so thoroughly
poisoned that the antidote proves useless.

"But I tell you men, also, that unless she find that antidote she will
surely reinfect herself. A man can not do what that man has done to me
and expect me to recover unaided. People talk of me, and I have given
them subjects enough! But--look at me! Straight between the eyes! Every
law have I broken except that! Do you understand? That one, which you
men consider yourselves exempt from, I have not broken--yet! Shall I
speak plainer? It is the fashion to be crude. But--I can't be; I am
unfashionable, you see."

She laughed, her haunted eyes fixed on his.

"Is there no chance for me? Because I drag his bedraggled name about
with me is there no decent chance, no decent hope? Is there