true. She stared with
moistened eyes. If this was really so the man had doubtless already
received answers and chosen. There must be so many others looking like
herself for a haven of safety, for deliverance from lives that were
unendurable. Who was she that she should aspire to this thing? To such
a man she could bring but health impaired, but the remnants of her
former strength. In a bit of looking-glass she saw her dark-rimmed
eyes and deemed that she had lost all such looks as she had once
possessed.

Yet something kept urging her. It was some sort of a fraud, doubtless.
The man was probably not in earnest. A letter from her would obtain no
attention from him. A minute later she was seated at the table, in
spite of all these misgivings, and writing to this man she had never
seen or heard of. She stated candidly that life had been too hard for
her and that she would do her best to be a faithful and willing helper
to a man who would treat her kindly. It was a poor little despairing
letter whose words sounded like a call for rescue from the deep. After
she had finished it she threw it aside, deciding that it was useless
to send it. An hour later she rushed out of the house, procured a
stamp at the nearest drug-store, and threw the letter in a box at the
street-corner. As soon as it was beyond her reach she would have given
anything to recall it. Her pale face had become flushed with shame. A
postman came up just then, who took out a key fastened to a brass
chain. She asked him to give her back her letter. But he swept up all
the missives and locked the box again, shaking his head.

"Nothing doing, miss," he told her, gruffly.

Before her look of disappointment he halted a few seconds to explain
some measure, full of red-tape, by which she might perhaps obtain the
letter again from the post-office. To Madge it seemed quite beyond the
powers of man to accomplish such a thing. And, moreover, the die was
cast. The thing might as well go. She would never hear from it again.

The next day she found work in a crowded loft, poorly ventilated and
heated, and came home to throw herself upon her bed, exhausted. Her
landlady's children were making a terrible noise in the next room, and
the racket shot pains through her head. On the morrow she was at work
again, and kept it up to the end of the week. When she returned on
Saturday, late in the afternoon, with her meagre pay-envelope in her
ragged muff, she had forgotten all abou