on stood before the mirror for a
moment and out of her body all the strength seemed to flow. Her knees
shook, and her hands grew moist and chilly. Lest her sudden weakness be
apparent to her mother she turned and went wearily into the other room.
There she sat on the edge of her bed and tried to think.

"Tomorrow!" She dully repeated. "Tomorrow we are put out--then a public
asylum for my mother--and the street or the almshouse for my father."
Even now she was not thinking of herself. If it came to that she still
believed God would not resent her opening for herself the single door of
escape.

But these two old and helpless people! To Mary they were desperate
burdens, but perhaps that only made her love them the more, and fight
for them the more loyally.

For a long while she sat there in silence, then she rose with a red spot
burning on each cheek and put on her hat again. At the lower landing she
encountered the landlord. He was not a prepossessing man at best, and
his face just now did not indicate that he was at his best.

"You got my note?" he inquired bluntly, and the girl nodded.

"I think," she faltered, "probably I can do something about the rent
tomorrow."

"Thinking isn't going to satisfy me," he announced. "Tomorrow's the
limit of my patience."

Mary suddenly remembered that to telephone costs a nickel, and that she
had none with her. For a moment she stood on the sidewalk before
climbing the two flights again to raid the little supply of her purse.
The endless anxiety and the unbroken strain of these calamitous months
had weakened her to the point of realizing that the stairs were steep.
Then she remembered that the Italian woman at the delicatessen shop was
her friend, and would trust her for the five cents. She fought her way
along to the store through a wind which threatened to sweep her off her
feet and which cut her like whiplashes.

Her trembling fingers made a task of turning the pages of the directory
and finding the number of a newspaper on Park row, but at last she
succeeded.

"Is Mr. Smitherton there?" she asked, and the curt direction came back,
"Hold the wire."

Smitherton was sitting at a desk littered with newspaper clippings and
sheaves of copy-paper. His shirt-sleeves were rolled to the elbow and
the light of his desk bulb shone on his ruffled hair as the "copy-kid"
called out to him with that insouciant freshness which stamps his kind.

"Dame wants you on the wire. Got a voice