position?
With every step she took down the dimly lighted street, the abyss into
which she had fallen seemed to grow deeper and darker. She was
overwhelmed with the magnitude of her misfortune. She shunned the
illumined thoroughfares with a half-crazed sense that every finger
would be pointed at her. Her final words, spoken to Ferguson, were the
last clear promptings of her womanly nature. After that, everything
grew confused, except the impression of remediless disaster and shame.
She was incapable of forming any correct judgment concerning her
position. The thought of her pastor filled her with horror. He, she
thought, would take the same view which the woman had so brutally
expressed--that in her eagerness to be married, she had brought to the
parsonage an unknown man and had involved a clergyman in her own
scandalous record.--It would all be in the papers, and her pastor's
name mixed up in the affair. She would rather die than subject him to
such an ordeal. Long after, when he learned the facts in the case, he
looked at her very sadly as he asked: "Didn't you know me better than
that? Had I so failed in my preaching that you couldn't come straight
to me?"

She wondered afterward that she had not done this, but she was too
morbid, too close upon absolute insanity, to do what was wise and safe.
She simply yielded to the wild impulse to escape, to cower, to hide
from every human eye, hastening through the darkest, obscurest streets,
not caring where. In the confusion of her mind she would retrace her
steps, and soon was utterly lost, wandering she knew not whither. As
it grew late, casual passers-by looked after her curiously, rough men
spoke to her, and others jeered. She only hastened on, driven by her
desperate trouble like the wild, ragged clouds that were flying across
the stormy March sky.

At last a policeman said gruffly, "You've passed me twice. You can't
be roaming the streets at this time of night. Why don't you go home?"

Standing before him and wringing her hands, she moaned, "I have no
home."

"Where did you come from?"

"Oh, I can't tell you! Take me to any place where a woman will be safe."

"I can't take you to any place now but the station house."

"But can I be alone there? I won't be put with anybody?"

"No, no; of course not! You'll be better off there. Come along.
'Taint far."

She walked beside him without a word.

"You'd better tell me something of your story. Perh