e and she, and made
sport of foolish women who came asking the disagreeable, which he
ridiculed as the impossible? Had she not sat with him and laughed at his
first wife, when she had gone away after some protest? The thought of
his mocking face put hate into her heart and she went home hardened
toward all the world. Laura Van Dorn was with the Hogan children, and
when Violet entered the house, she gathered them to her heart with a mad
passion and wept--a woman without hope--a woman spurned and mocked in
the only holy place she had in her heart.

Laura saw the widowed mother hysterically fondling the children, madly
caressing them, foolishly chattering over them, and when Violet made it
clear that she wished to be alone, Laura left. But if she could have
heard Violet babbling on during the evening, of the clothes she would
buy for the youngsters, about the good times they would have with the
money, about the ways they were going to spend the little fortune that
was theirs, Laura Van Dorn--thrifty, frugal, shrewd Laura, might have
helped the thoughtless woman before it was too late. But even if Laura
had interfered, it would have been but for a few months or a few years
at most.

The end was inevitable--whether it had been five hundred or six hundred
or five thousand or six thousand. For Violet was a prodigal bred and
born. At first she tried to get some work. But when she found she had to
leave the children alone in the house or in care of a neighbor or on the
streets, she gave up her job. For when she came home, she found the
foolish frills and starched tucks in which she kept them, dirty and
torn, and some way she felt that they were losing social caste by the
low estate of their clothes, so she bought them silks and fine linens
while her money lasted, and when it was gone in the spring--then they
were hungry, and needy; and she could not leave them by day.

If the poor were always wise, and the rich were always foolish, if
hardship taught us sense, and indulgence made us giddy, what a fine
world it would be. How virtue would be rewarded. How vice would be
rebuked. But wisdom does not run with social rank, nor with commercial
rating. Some of us who are poor are exceedingly foolish, and some of
those who are rich have a world of judgment. And Violet Hogan,--poor and
mad with a mother love that was as insane as an animal's when she saw
her children hungry and needy, knew before she knew anything else that
she must li