And there at the basement window drooled
and cackled the fat idiot girl whose mother sacrificed
everything always to dress her freshly in pink. What a
world!--where a few people such a very few!--lived in health
and comfort and cleanliness--and the millions lived in disease
and squalor, ignorant, untouched of civilization save to wear
its cast-off clothes and to eat its castaway food and to live
in its dark noisome cellars!--And to toil unceasingly to make
for others the good things of which they had none themselves!
It made her heartsick--the sadder because nothing could be
done about it. Stay and help? As well stay to put out a
conflagration barehanded and alone.
As the carriage reached wider Second Avenue, the horses broke
into a trot. Susan drew a long breath of the purer air--then
shuddered as she saw the corner where the dive into which the
cadet had lured her flaunted its telltale awnings. Lower
still her spirits sank when she was passing, a few blocks
further on, the music hall. There, too, she had had a chance,
had let hope blaze high. And she was going forward--into--the
region where she had been a slave to Freddie Palmer--no, to
the system of which he was a slave no less than she----
"I _must_ be strong! I _must!_" Susan said to herself, and
there was desperation in the gleam of her eyes, in the set of
her chin. "This time I will fight! And I feel at last that
I can.
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