lock.

"Oh, yes, I'm sure," I said. "Why?"

"Why! You have got slow. Just because I didn't say good-by to them
fellows up at the Pen, and--"

"Oh! You've escaped!"

"That's what. First jail-break in fifteen years. What d'ye think of
your Tommy, old girl, eh? Ain't he the gamest? Ain't you proud of
him?"

My God, Mag! Proud of him. He didn't know--he couldn't see--himself.
He, shut in like a wild beast, couldn't see what this year has done for
him. Oh, the change--the change in him! My boy Tommy, with the gay,
gallus manner, and the pretty, jolly brogue, and the laughing mouth
under his brown mustache. And this man--his face is old, Mag,
old--oh!--and hard--and--and tough, cheap and tough. There's something
in his eyes now and about his shaven mouth--oh, Maggie, Maggie!

"Look here, Nance." He caught me by the shoulders, knocking up my chin
so that he could look down squarely at me. "What's your graft? What's
it to be between us? What've ye been doing all this time? Out with
it! I want to know."

I shook myself free and faced him.

"I've been--Tom Dorgan, I've been to hear the greatest actors and
actresses in the world say and do the finest things in the world. I've
watched princesses and kings--even if they're only stage ones. I've
read a new book every night--a great picture book, in which the
pictures move and speak--that's the stage, Tom Dorgan. Much of it
wasn't true, but a girl who's been brought up by the Cruelty doesn't
have to be told what's true and what's false. I've met these people
and lived with them--as one does who thinks the same thoughts and feels
what others feel. I know the world now, Tom Dorgan, the real world of
men and women--not the little world of crooks, nor yet the littler one
of fairy stories. I've got a glimpse, too, of that other world where
all the scheming and lying and cheating is changed as if by magic into
something that deceives all right, but doesn't hurt. It's the world of
art and artists, Tom Dorgan, where people paint their lies, or write
them, or act them; where they lift money all right from men's pockets,
but lift their souls and their lives, too, away from the things that
trouble and bore and--and degrade.

"You needn't sneer; it's made a different Nance out of me, Tom Dorgan.
And, oh, but I'm sorry for the pert little beggar we both knew that
lied and stole and hid and ran and skulked! She was like a poor little
ignorant traveler in a gr