he man who was her master now. She must please him, must
accept what treatment he saw fit to give, must rein in her
ambitions to suit the uncertain gait and staying power of his
ability to achieve. She could not leave him; he could leave
her when he might feel so inclined. Her master--capricious,
tyrannical, a drunkard. Her sole reliance--and the first
condition of his protection was that she should not try to do
for herself. A dependent, condemned to become even more dependent.

CHAPTER XVII

SHE now spent a large part of every day in wandering, like a
derelict, drifting aimlessly this way or that, up into the
Park or along Fifth Avenue. She gazed intently into shop
windows, apparently inspecting carefully all the articles on
display; but she passed on, unconscious of having seen
anything. If she sat at home with a book she rarely turned a
page, though her gaze was fastened upon the print as if she
were absorbingly interested.

What was she feeling? The coarse contacts of street life and
tenement life--the choice between monstrous defilements from
human beings and monstrous defilements from filth and vermin.
What was she seeing? The old women of the slums--the forlorn,
aloof figures of shattered health and looks--creeping along
the gutters, dancing in the barrel houses, sleeping on the
floor in some vile hole in the wall--sleeping the sleep from
which one awakes bitten by mice and bugs, and swarming with lice.

She had entire confidence in Brent's judgment. Brent must
have discovered that she was without talent for the stage--for
if he had thought she had the least talent, would he not in
his kindness have arranged or offered some sort of place in
some theater or other? Since she had no stage
talent--then--what should she do? What _could_ she do? And so
her mind wandered as aimlessly as her wandering steps. And
never before had the sweet melancholy of her eyes been so moving.

But, though she did not realize it, there was a highly
significant difference between this mood of profound
discouragement and all the other similar moods that had
accompanied and accelerated her downward plunges. Every time
theretofore, she had been cowed by the crushing mandate of
destiny--had made no struggle against it beyond the futile
threshings about of aimless youth. This time she lost neither
strength nor courage. She was no longer a child; she was no
longer mere human flotsam and jetsam. She did not kn