of insuperable difficulties resist all
temptations. Such admiration was certainly due Olga, a tall, handsome
girl, a little passive and slow, yet with that touch of dignity which a
continued mood of introspection so often lends to the young. Olga had
been in Chicago for a year living with an aunt who, when she returned to
Sweden, placed her niece in a boarding-house which she knew to be
thoroughly respectable. But a friendless girl of such striking beauty
could not escape the machinations of those who profit by the sale of
girls. Almost immediately Olga found herself beset by two young men who
continually forced themselves upon her attention, although she refused
all their invitations to shows and dances. In six months the frightened
girl had changed her boarding-place four times, hoping that the men
would not be able to follow her. She was also obliged constantly to look
for a cheaper place, because the dull season in the cloak-making trade
came early that year. In the fifth boarding-house she finally found
herself so hopelessly in arrears that the landlady, tired of waiting for
the "new cloak making to begin," at length fulfilled a long-promised
threat, and one summer evening at nine o'clock literally put Olga into
the street, retaining her trunk in payment of the debt. The girl walked
the street for hours, until she fancied that she saw one of her
persecutors in the distance, when she hastily took refuge in a sheltered
doorway, crouching in terror. Although no one approached her, she sat
there late into the night, apparently too apathetic to move. With the
curious inconsequence of moody youth, she was not aroused to action by
the situation in which she found herself. The incident epitomized to her
the everlasting riddle of the universe to which she could see no
solution and she drearily decided to throw herself into the lake. As she
left the doorway at daybreak for this pitiful purpose, she attracted the
attention of a passing policeman. In response to his questions, kindly
at first but becoming exasperated as he was convinced that she was
either "touched in her wits" or "guying" him, he obtained a confused
story of the persecutions of the two young men, and in sheer
bewilderment he finally took her to the station on the very charge
against the thought of which she had so long contended.

The girl was doubtless sullen in court the next morning; she was
resentful of the policeman's talk, she was oppressed and discoura