They choose the hardest one possible."

"But do they choose?" asked Faith, who had become interested in spite,
of herself. "Are they not driven this way or that, according to their
opportunities? In my case there was no choice. I had tried everything
else. Hard as it is, I am thankful for my present employment."

The man looked at her sharply. There was genuine sympathy in his face.
Almost involuntarily he broke out in violent sentences.

"You girls are to blame in great measure for all this, and where the
fault is not yours it lies with your parents! Instead of cultivating
your graces you bedraggle them with labor! Instead of marketing your
smiles you trade in blood and sinew! Every day in that store means a
year off of your life; every anxious moment means an inroad into your
rightful happiness! Why will you not see the folly of your ways? Why can
you not understand that it is a false morality which is killing you?
Why, if I were a girl"--his voice had dropped to the most persuasive
cadence--"I should value my beauty too highly to hide it behind a
counter, and my subsistence should be the boundless reward of affection,
rather than the niggardly recompense for wasted tissues! Of course, I
shock you, because you have done no thinking for yourself. A lot of
narrow souled ancestors have done thinking for you. They have brought
you here to let you shift for yourself, but woe to you if you offend one
of their petty notions of honor. See, child! I have money, I have
constant ease. Could you blame me for offering to share it with youth
and beauty?"

As he breathed these words he gazed at Faith eagerly. The soul in the
man had vanished. He was dangerously in earnest.

The thrill that flowed through Faith's veins as he spoke was not of
fear, for, child that she was, she understood his meaning, and his words
stirred the deepest channels of her soul--she was more grieved than
shocked at the man's distorted reasoning.

"You are all wrong," she said, sadly. "You cannot understand! There are
some things more precious than gold to us, more precious even than
comfort or affection. Not for the world would I lose this 'something'
which I possess! It is the haven of my soul at the hour of every trial.
It is the one solace of my life in the desperate condition that I have
reached. You, a man of years, should not argue so wrongfully. It is
wicked to place temptations before the young and wretched."

She had regained her composure a