avis, catching her hand.

"Oh, please don't--please"--said Maggie.

Then she walked out, drawing her thin shawl around her.

CHAPTER II

IN THE DEPTHS

All the week the two girls worked together at the mill; a week which
was to Helen one long nightmare, filled, as it was, with the hum and
roar of machinery, the hot breath of the mill, and worst of all, the
seared and deadening thought that she was disgraced.

In the morning she entered the mill hoping it might fall on and
destroy her. At night she went home to a drunken father and a little
sister who needed, in her childish sorrow, all the pity and care of
the elder one.

And one night her father, being more brutal than ever, had called out
as Helen came in: "Come in, my mill-girl!"

Richard Travis always drove her home, and each night he became more
familiar and more masterful. She felt,--she knew--that she was
falling under his fascinating influence.

And worse than all, she knew she did not care.

There is a depth deeper even than the sin--the depth where the doer
ceases to care.

Indeed, she was beginning to make herself believe that she loved
him--as he said he wished her to do--and as he loved her, he said;
and with what he said and what he hinted she dreamed beautiful,
desperate dreams of the future.

She did not wonder, then, that on one drive she had permitted him to
hold her hand in his. What a strong hand it was, and how could so
weak a hand as her's resist it? And all the time he had talked so
beautifully and had quoted Browning and Keats. And finally he had
told her that she had only to say the word, and leave the mill with
him forever.

But where, she did not even care--only to get away from the mill,
from her disgrace, from her drunken father, from her wretched life.

And another night, when he had helped her out of the buggy, and while
she was close to him and looking downward, he had bent over her and
kissed her on the neck, where her hair had been gathered up and had
left it white and fair and unprotected. And it sent a hot flame of
shame to the depths of her brain, but she could only look up and
say--"Oh, please don't--please don't, Mr. Travis," and then dart
quickly into the old gate and run to her home.

But within it was only to meet the taunts and sneers of her father
that brought again the hot Conway blood in defying anger to her face,
and then she had turned and rushed back to the gate which Travis had
just left, cry