fatigue but from desperation,
completed the picture his imagination had already painted of some
world-worn, knocked-about creature who had come to the point at which,
in his own phrase, she was "all in."

As far as this described Letty Gravely, he was wrong. She was not "all
in." She was never more mentally alert than at that very minute. If
she moved slowly, if she sank on the seat as if too beaten down by
events to do more, it was because her mind was so intensely centered
on her immediate problems.

She had, in fact, just formed a great resolution. Whatever became of
her, she would never go back to Judson Flack, her stepfather. This had
not been clearly in her mind when she had gone down his steps and
walked away, but the occasion presented itself now as one to be
seized. In seizing it, however, the alternatives were difficult. She
was without a cent, a shelter, a job, a friend, or the prospect of a
meal. It was probable that there was not at that minute in New York a
human being so destitute. Before nightfall she would have to find some
nominal motive for living or be arrested as a vagrant.

She was not appalled. For the first time in her life she was
relatively free from fear. Even with nothing but her person as she
stood, she was her own mistress. No big dread hung over her--that is,
no big dread of the kind represented by Judson Flack. She might jump
into the river or go to the bad, but in either case she would do it of
her own free will. Merely to have the exercise of her own free will
gave her the kind of physical relief which a human being gets from
stretching limbs cramped and crippled by chains.

Besides, there was in her situation an underlying possibility of
adventure. This she didn't phrase, since she didn't understand it. She
only had the intuition in her heart that where "the world is all
before you, where to choose your place of rest, and Providence your
guide," Providence _becomes_ your guide. Verbally she put it merely in
the words, "Things happen," though as to what could happen between
half-past three in the afternoon and midnight, when she would possibly
be in jail, she could not begin to imagine.

So absorbed was she in this momentous uncertainty that she scarcely
noticed that some one had seated himself at the other end of the
bench. It was a public place; it was likely that some one would. She
felt neither curiosity nor resentment. A lack of certain of the
feminine instincts, or their re