"As I reached the door a policeman caught me by the arm, but I jerked away and cried. 'I _will_ go in! He is my husband--mine!' And then I beat upon the door before they could stop me and screamed again, 'He is my husband!' At that they overpowered me and dragged me off--somewhere--I don't know--to the station, I believe. That night my baby was born." "How old is your child?" asked Margaret, her voice so strained and hard that the sick woman looked up surprised. "Six years. Have I tired you with my story? I did not mean to be so long." "Go on. It interests me deeply," answered Margaret, with irony unnoticed by the sick woman. "I am learning that we all are bound up in one another's woes--and wickedness." After a moment she asked with a tinge of bitterness, "And was no voice lifted to save this girl?" "I cannot tell. I never saw her--do not know her name or where she lived. But this I know; that in time he would be false to her as he was false to me. It was not in him to be--" "Let us not talk of him," said Margaret, hastily. "Tell me about yourself? How did you live?" "Oh, madam, ask me anything but that! 'Twould break my heart to tell that tale and yours to hear it. How can a poor girl live who has a baby in her arms and not a friend?... I went from door to door asking for work. It was the same old story everywhere I went. They looked at me--a girl of seventeen--and at the child--and then they shook their heads and closed the door. "One day when I was desperate I got a piece of crepe and put it on my hat and _lied_. I said my husband had been killed, and would they give a poor girl work? The child was good--he seldom cried, I told them--and I would work at night and have no afternoon off to make up for his being there. If only they would try me! Then they asked me questions--what was my husband's name? Where was he killed? and how?--simple, natural questions, all of them, I know now, but then they seemed traps to catch me, and I grew confused and tripped myself, and then--they shook their heads, just as before, and shut the door." "Did you never try anything but housework?" "Oh, yes, I tried the others first. They would not have me in the stores. They found out. Somehow I could not help their finding out. I don't know how they did it, but they did. There was always somebody to tell." "And could you get no sewing to do?" "I had never been taught to sew. I had been in school until I met him. It was the plan always that I should be a teacher. Of course I could not even think of that--afterwards." Margaret's lips tightened. "Why did you not go to him, this man," she cried with sudden vehemence, "and demand support for your child?"