mming this torrent, once
released. Kindness, disinterested friendship, was the one unbearable
thing.

"We must bring her upstairs," said Sally Grover, quietly, "she's going
to pieces."

Hodder helping, they fairly carried her up the flight, and laid her on
Sally Grover's own bed.

That afternoon she was taken to Mrs. McQuillen's.

The fiends are not easily cheated. And during the nights and days that
followed even Sally Grower, whose slight frame was tireless, whose
stoicism was amazing, came out of the sick room with a white face and
compressed lips. Tossing on the mattress, Kate Marcy enacted over again
incident after incident of her past life, events natural to an existence
which had been largely devoid of self-pity, but which now, clearly
enough, tested the extreme limits of suffering. Once more, in her
visions, she walked the streets, wearily measuring the dark, empty
blocks, footsore, into the smaller hours of the night; slyly,
insinuatingly, pathetically offering herself--all she possessed--to the
hovering beasts of prey. And even these rejected her, with gibes, with
obscene jests that sprang to her lips and brought a shudder to those who
heard.

Sometimes they beheld flare up fitfully that mysterious thing called
the human spirit, which all this crushing process had not served to
extinguish. She seemed to be defending her rights, whatever these may
have been! She expostulated with policemen. And once, when Hodder was
present, she brought back vividly to his mind that first night he had
seen her, when she had defied him and sent him away. In moments she
lived over again the careless, reckless days when money and good looks
had not been lacking, when rich food and wines had been plentiful.
And there were other events which Sally Grower and the good-natured
Irishwoman, Mrs. McQuillen, not holding the key, could but dimly
comprehend. Education, environment, inheritance, character--what a
jumble of causes! What Judge was to unravel them, and assign the exact
amount of responsibility?

There were other terrible scenes when, more than semiconscious, she
cried out piteously for drink, and cursed them for withholding it. And
it was in the midst of one of these that an incident occurred which made
a deep impression upon young Dr. Giddings, hesitating with his opiates,
and assisting the indomitable Miss Grower to hold his patient. In the
midst of the paroxysm Mr. Bentley entered and stood over her by the
bedside,