"He burned up Rome--and he burned up the Christian martyrs,"
said Mrs. Tucker. "I had a good schooling. Besides, sermons
is highly educating."

"Well," said Susan, "if I had a choice of living under Nero or
of living under that God you and Mrs. Reardon talk about, I'd
take Nero and be thankful and happy."

Mrs. Tucker would have fled if she could have afforded it. As
it was all she ventured was a sigh and lips moving in prayer.

On a Friday in late October, at the lunch hour, Susan was
walking up and down the sunny side of Broadway. It was the
first distinctly cool day of the autumn; there had been a heavy
downpour of rain all morning, but the New York sun that is ever
struggling to shine and is successful on all but an occasional
day was tearing up and scattering the clouds with the aid of a
sharp north wind blowing down the deep canyon. She was wearing
her summer dress still--old and dingy but clean. That look of
neatness about the feet--that charm of a well-shaped foot and
a well-turned ankle properly set off--had disappeared--with her
the surest sign of the extreme of desperate poverty. Her shoes
were much scuffed, were even slightly down at the heel; her
sailor hat would have looked only the worse had it had a fresh
ribbon on its crown. This first hint of winter had stung her
fast numbing faculties into unusual activity. She was
remembering the misery of the cold in Cincinnati--the misery
that had driven her into prostitution as a drunken driver's
lash makes the frenzied horse rush he cares not where in his
desire to escape. This wind of Broadway--this first warning of
winter--it was hissing in her ears: "Take hold! Winter is
coming! Take hold!"

Summer and winter--fiery heat and brutal cold. Like the devils
in the poem, the poor--the masses, all but a few of the human
race--were hurried from fire to ice, to vary their torment and
to make it always exquisite.

To shelter herself for a moment she paused at a spot that
happened to be protected to the south by a projecting sidewalk
sign. She was facing, with only a tantalizing sheet of glass
between, a display of winter underclothes on wax figures. To
show them off more effectively the sides and the back of the
window were mirrors. Susan's gaze traveled past the figures to
a person she saw standing at full length before her. "Who is
that pale, stooped girl?" she thought. "How dreary and sad she
looks! How hard she is fighting to make her