"Oh, madam, I was wild!--was wild! I had nowhere to go to hide my shame. My father's house was closed to me--my mother dead. In all the world I had no friend. It was my fault, my grievous fault. I know that well, and then I have been told it often since,--if I had been a modest girl and staid at home and turned away from all his tales of love and all his promises, this never would have come to me, they've said.... Oh, I have told myself that many times with bitterest tears!... But, lady, even though she knows it is her fault, her sin, that has brought her to this plight--still, _still_, 'tis hard for a poor girl to feel her pains upon her and know she has no friends!" Margaret took the woman's thin, trembling hand between her two strong ones and held it close. "It _is_ hard," she said with infinite gentleness, "hard and very pitiful. The world is full of hard things for women." The sick girl looked up with a startled expression. "Surely, sin with its sorrows has not touched you?" "My poor girl, the sorrows that come from sin do not stop with the sinning. But go on with your story," said Margaret. "Oh, yes. I was telling you why I was so desperate that day; I thought you would not understand. I think a madness was in my blood. You see, it was very hard, and I was so young I could not see the justice of it. I had been his toy--his plaything--and now, broken and useless, he cast me into the mire of the street, while he--and lady, my sin had been his sin too--to-morrow he would marry a pure girl, such as I had been, and the world would look on and wish him joy and think it right.... "He had not told me where the marriage was to be, nor who the girl was. But the next morning I went to his home and waited in a place near by for him to come out. I did not mean to speak to him again--only to follow him. For hours I waited. I was faint from lack of food, but I was afraid to leave the spot for fear of missing him. At last a gentleman came out and drove off, and then the man I loved and hated. A carriage was waiting and he was driven away. I ran after it. I would have hired a cab only I had no money. I could not run so very fast, you know, and sometimes I almost stumbled and fell--then caught myself and hurried on. And though it gained on me I kept my eye on the carriage. At Sixteenth street it turned south toward the Square, and then I knew it was going to St. John's." "St. John's!" "Yes. You know the place? It is near Lafayette Square--the old church with the columns in front. When I got there, out of breath and almost dead from running, a crowd was on the sidewalk and even out into the street waiting for the bridal party to come out. They would have crowded around the very door but that policemen kept them back. I elbowed my way through them and was so desperate and violent that they made way for me, thinking I was some crazy woman--as indeed I almost think myself I was.