shoes! Oh, the
thoughts of her, the memories, the dreams of what had been and what might
be, as she heard the long hours toll themselves away! Oh, the bitter
tears she may have shed, and the bitter words she may have uttered, and
the bitter hate that may have overflowed in her against that vague
something we call Society! And, oh, the sweet sleep that fell upon her at
last, unexpected--as the end of our waiting shall come, when we weary
most--falling upon her as the dew falls, closing her weary eye-lids,
giving her peace and rest and strength to meet another to-day!

Ned stopped when Nellie did, of course. Neither spoke. A sense of great
shame crept upon him, he hardly knew why. He could not look at Nellie. He
wished she would move on and leave him there. The silent pathos of that
sleeping face cried to him. Lowest of the low, filthy, diseased probably,
her face as though the womanliness had been stamped from her by a brutal
heel of iron, she yet was a woman. This outcast and Nellie were of one
sex; they all three were of one Humanity.

A few hours before and he would have passed her by with a glance of
contemptuous pity. But now, he seemed to have another sense awakened in
him, the sense that feels, that sympathises in the heart with the hearts
of others. It was as though he himself slept there. It was as though he
understood this poor sister, whom the merciful called erring, and the
merciless wicked, but of whom the just could only say: she is what we in
her place must have become. She was an atom of the world of suffering by
which his heart was being wrung. She was one upon whom the Wrong fell
crushingly, and she was helpless to resist it. He was strong, and he had
given no thought to those who suffered as this poor outcast suffered. He
had lived his own narrow life, and shared the sin, and assisted Wrong by
withholding his full strength from the side of Right. And upon him was
the responsibility for this woman. He, individually, had kicked her into
the streets, and dragged her footsore through the parks, and cast her
there to bear testimony against him to every passer-by; he, because he
had not fought, whole-souled, with those who seek to shatter the
something which, without quite understanding, he knew had kicked and
dragged and outcasted this woman sleeping here. Ned always took his
lessons personally. It was perhaps, a touch in him of the morbidity that
seizes so often the wandering Arabs of the western plains.