f possible; if not, then without it. I'm going
to have everything--money, comfort, luxury, pleasure.
Everything!" And she dropped a folded skirt emphatically upon
the pile she had been making, and gave a short, sharp nod. "I
was taught a lot of things when I was little--things about
being sweet and unselfish and all that. They'd be fine, if
the world was Heaven. But it isn't."

"Not exactly," said Clara.

"Maybe they're fine, if you want to get to Heaven," continued
Susan. "But I'm not trying to get to Heaven. I'm trying to
live on earth. I don't like the game, and I don't like its
rules. But--it's the only game, and I can't change the rules.
So I'm going to follow them--at least, until I get what I want."

"Do you mean to say you've got any respect for yourself?" said
Clara. "_I_ haven't. And I don't see how any girl in our
line can have."

"I thought I hadn't," was Susan's reply, "until I talked
with--with someone I met the other day. If you slipped and
fell in the mud--or were thrown into it--you wouldn't say,
'I'm dirty through and through. I can never get clean
again'--would you?"

"But that's different," objected Clara.

"Not a bit," declared Susan. "If you look around this world,
you'll see that everybody who ever moved about at all has
slipped and fallen in the mud--or has been pushed in."

"Mostly pushed in."

"Mostly pushed in," assented Susan. "And those that have good
sense get up as soon as they can, and wash as much of the mud
off as'll come off--maybe all--and go on. The fools--they
worry about the mud. But not I--not any more!. . . And not
you, my dear--when I get you uptown."

Clara was now looking on Susan's departure as a dawn of good
luck for herself. She took a headache powder, telephoned for
a carriage, and helped carry down the two big packages that
contained all Susan's possessions worth moving. And they
kissed each other good-by with smiling faces. Susan did not
give Clara, the loose-tongued, her new address; nor did Clara,
conscious of her own weakness, ask for it.

"Don't put yourself out about me," cried Clara in farewell.
"Get a good tight grip yourself, first."

"That's advice I need," answered Susan. "Good-by.
Soon--_soon!_"

The carriage had to move slowly through those narrow tenement
streets, so thronged were they with the people swarmed from
hot little rooms into the open to try to get a little air that
did not threaten to burn and choke as it