e extended his hand--again smiled.

"Thank you," he said. "Good-bye."

The acrobat was loath to let the little hand go. But there was nothing
else to do. He dropped it, at last, with a quick-drawn sigh.

"It'll come out all right," he muttered.

Then the boy went his way alone. His shoulders were proudly
squared--his head held high....

Meantime, they had revived Millie Slade. She was in the common
dressing-room--a littered, infamous, foul, place, situated below stage.
Behind her the gas flared and screamed. Still in her panderous
disguise, within hearing of the rasping music and the tramp of the
dance, within hearing of the coarse applause, this tender mother sat
alone, unconscious of evil--uncontaminated, herself kept holy by her
motherhood, lifted by her love from the touch of sin. To her all the
world was a temple, undefiled, wherein she worshipped, wherein the
child was a Presence, purifying every place.

She had no strength left for tragic behaviour. She sat limp, shedding
weak tears, whimpering, tearing at her finger nails.

"I'm found out!" she moaned. "Oh, my God! He'll never love me no
more!"

A woman entered in haste.

"You got it, Aggie?" the mother asked.

"Yes, dear. Now, you just drink this, and you'll feel better."

"I don't want it--now."

"Aw, now, you drink it! Poor dear! It'll do you lots of good."

"He wouldn't want me to."

"Aw, he won't know. And you need it, dear. _Do_ drink it!"

"No, Aggie," said the mother. "It don't matter that he don't know. I
just don't want it. I _can't_ do what he wouldn't like me to."

The glass was put aside. And Aggie sat beside the mother, and drew her
head to a sympathetic breast.

"Don't cry!" she whispered. "Oh, Millie, don't cry!"

"Oh," the woman whimpered, "he'll think me an ugly thing, Aggie. He'll
think me a skinny thing. If I'd only got here in time, if I'd only
looked right, he might have loved me still. But he won't love me no
more--after to-day!"

"Hush, Millie! He's only a kid. He don't know nothing about--such
things."

"Only a kid," said the mother, according to the perverted experience of
her life, "but still a man!"

"He wouldn't care."

"They _all_ care!"

Indeed, this was her view; and by her knowledge of the world she spoke.

"Not him," said Aggie.

The mother was infinitely distressed. "Oh," she moaned, "if I'd only
had time to pad!"

This was the greater tragedy of her situation: that