-by all who don't do it, but live
pleasantly by making others do it. Wasn't there something in
the ideas of Etta's father, old Tom Brashear? Couldn't
sensible, really loving people devise some way of making most
tasks less repulsive, of lessening the burdens of those tasks
that couldn't be anything but repulsive? Was this stupid
system, so cruel, so crushing, and producing at the top such
absurd results as flashy, insolent autos and silly palaces and
overfed, overdressed women, and dogs in jeweled collars, and
babies of wealth brought up by low menials--was this system
really the best?

"If they'd stop canting about 'honest work' they might begin to
get somewhere."

In the effort to prevent her downward drop from beginning again
she searched all the occupations open to her. She could not
find one that would not have meant only the most visionary
prospect of some slight remote advancement, and the certain and
speedy destruction of what she now realized was her chief asset
and hope--her personal appearance. And she resolved that she
would not even endanger it ever again. The largest part of the
little capital she took away from Forty-third Street had gone
to a dentist who put in several fillings of her back teeth.
She had learned to value every charm--hair, teeth, eyes, skin,
figure, hands. She watched over them all, because she felt
that when her day finally came--and come it would, she never
allowed long to doubt--she must be ready to enter fully into
her own. Her day! The day when fate should change the life her
outward self would be compelled to live, would bring it into
harmony with the life of inward self--the self she could control.

Katy had struck up a friendship at once profitable and
sentimental with her stage manager. She often stayed out all
night. On one of these nights Susan, alone in the tiny room
and asleep, was roused by feeling hands upon her. She started
up half awake and screamed.

"Sh!" came in Lange's voice. "It's me."

Susan had latterly observed sly attempts on his part to make
advances without his wife and daughter's suspecting; but she
had thought her way of quietly ignoring was effective. "You
must go," she whispered. "Mrs. Lange must have heard."

"I had to come," said he hoarsely, a mere voice in the
darkness. "I can't hold out no longer without you, Lorna."

"Go--go," urged Susan.

But it was too late. In the doorway, candle in hand, appeared
Mrs. Lange. Despi