Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-02-14

provident class who fed on the very offal OF
social activity. She was becoming more
and more a mere drifting derelict upon the
muddy waters of the lower life. mindless
and soulless and purposeless. No; not Alto
gether mindless, she corrected herself. for
with her deeper spiritual degradation she
felt, she was becoming more and more an
retrospective and self-torturing dreamer,
self-deceiving and self-blighting-lke YER
liable starving rat, that has been. forced to
turn and nibble ludicrously at its own tail.
Yet why had she faltered and hestated,
al such moment she demanded of herself
This she could not fully answer. She was
becoming enigmatic, even to herself And
already it was too late to draw back-eyen
the tantalizing dream of withdrawal was
now mockery. For, once, she had thought
that life was single straight thread; now
she knew it to be notified fabric in which
the past is woven and bound up with the
future, in which tangled tomorrows and
yesterdays make up the huddled cloth. She
writhed. in her agony of mind at the
thought that she had no one to whom to
open her soul. This she had always shrunk
from doing before Durkin (and that, she
warned herself was an i'll omenD and there
had been no one else to whom she could
go for comradeship and consolation. Then
she began making excuses for herself, fee
bly,, at first. more passionately as she con-
tinued her preoccupied pacing Of the floor.
She was only one of many-women, the
most jealousy guarded and the most soft
ly shrouded women had erred. And, after
all. much lay in the point of view. What
was criminality from one aspect. was legi-
innate endeavor from another. All life, she
felt was growing more feverish more COM
petitive, more homeopathic, more potentially
and Dramatically criminal. She was leaf
on the current of the time.
And her only redemption now she told
herself, was to continue along that course
in a manner which would lend dignity, per-
haps even the glorified dignity of tragedy
itself, to what must otherwise be a squalid
and sordid life. Since she was in the stream
she must strike out for the depths, not
cringe and whimper among the shadows.
By daring and adventuring. audacously, to
the uttermost that at least could still lend
a sinister radiance to her wrongdoing. That
alone could make excuse for those whim-
pering and sniveling sensibiities which
would not keep to the kennel Of her heart.
Yet 1t was only the flesh that was weak
and faltering, she argued-and in an abb
stracted moment she remembered how even
a greater evildoer than she herself had
buoyed her will to endure great trial. That
which hath made them drunk hath made
me bold" she repeated to herself, inspira-
tionally, as she touched the electric call-bell
and ordered brandy and setter to be sent
up to her room.
She hated the thought of it, and the taste
of it--but more than all she hated the fu-
ture into which she dare longer look.
AS she medicined her cowardice with the
liquor she could not help marveling at the
seeming miracle, for, minute by minute,
with each scalding draught, her weakheart-
edness ebbed away. She knew that later
there would be stern exaction for that
strength. but she had her grim work to do,
and beggars cannot always be choosers.
Then she gathered up her veil and hat
and gloves. and once more made ready for
her days enterprise. The pith-bal mad
passed from its period Of revulsion to its
period of attraction.
CTo be Continued Tomorrow