a pity? Tell me, where are you living now? Have you made
your plans for the future? Oh, who do you think was with me just before
you called yesterday? Polly--Polly Love, you remember! She's grown stout
and plainer, poor thing, and I was so sorry----Her brother was in your
Brotherhood, wasn't he? Is he as strangely fond of her as ever? Is he?
Eh? Don't you understand? Polly's brother, I mean?"

"He's dead, Glory. Yes, dead. He died a month ago. Poor boy, he died
broken-hearted! He had come to hear of his sister's trouble at the
hospital. I was to blame for that. He never looked up again."

There was silence; both were gazing into the fire, and Glory's mouth was
quivering. All at once she said: "John--John Storm, why can't you
understand that it's not the same with me as with other women? There seem
to be two women in me always. After I left the hospital I went through a
good deal. Nobody will ever know how much I went through. But even at the
worst, somehow I seemed to enjoy and rejoice in everything. Things
happened that made me cry, but there was another me that was laughing.
And that's how it is with the life I am living now. It is not I myself
that go through this--this mire, as you call it, it's only my other self,
my lower self, if you like, but I am not touched by it at all. Don't you
see that? Don't you, now?"

"There are professions which are a source of temptation, and talents that
are a snare, Glory----"

"I see, I see what you mean. There are not many ways a woman can succeed
in--that's the cruelty of things. But there are a few, and I've chosen
the one I'm fit for. And now, now that I've escaped from all that misery,
that meanness, and have brought the eyes of London upon me, and the world
is full of smiles for me, and sunshine, and I am happy, you come at last,
you that I couldn't find when I wanted you so much--oh, so much!--because
you had forgotten me; you come to me out of a darkness like the grave and
tell me to give it all up. Yes, yes, yes, that's what you mean--give it
all up! Oh, it's cruel!"

She covered her face with her hands and sobbed. He bent over her with a
sorrowful face and said, "My child, if I have come out of a darkness as
of the grave it is because I had _not_ forgotten you there, but was
thinking of you every day and hour."

Her sobbing ceased, but the tears still flowed through her fingers.

"Before that poor lad abandoned hope he came out into the world too-stole
out-thinking