"Angelica, I don’t love like that. I don’t care whether you’re unhappy or not. I want you! I am mad for you! Even if it means your damnation and ruin, on earth and in hell! I don’t care for anything but you--not for God Himself!" "Don’t talk like that!" "It’s true. I know well what I’m doing. For you I’ve lost my immortal soul. I haven’t a soul now. I love you as Satan loves. I want to drag you down to hell with me!" Angelica, however, was by no means so concerned with hell as she was with this world. "But think what would become of me!" she cried. "Who cares?" This viewpoint startled her. "Well," she said, "_I_ care." "No, you don’t," he answered. "You only care for me." She wished to argue, to defend herself; but it was too late. She was lost. His words so appealed to the recklessness in her own nature, to her devil-may-care heart, that she could not counter them. She loved this man; her whole heart urged her blindly to follow him, to do what he asked, to hurry gloriously to destruction. She made a half-hearted effort to get away from him, but he only held her closer. He looked down at her and laughed. "No use!" he said. "You don’t _want_ to go!" Suddenly she flung her arms about his neck, and clung to him, looking up into his bold eyes. "All right!" she cried. "_I_ don’t care!" PART TWO CHAPTER ONE. I Mrs. Kennedy was very tired that afternoon. She had just finished scrubbing a kitchen for a tenant, crawling laboriously across the greasy soft-wood boards with her brush and her pail and her cloth. There had been some foreign sort of fish stew cooking on the stove all the time, and the smell had turned her sick. She had got splinters into her water-softened hands, and her back ached with a ferocious, burning ache. She came down the basement stairs carrying the empty pail, slowly--far more slowly than she used to come. "There’s not a thing in for my supper," she thought. "Well, I shan’t bother to go out and get anything. I’ll just lay me down and rest. I’m tired--tired _out_!" The front door was unlatched. She pushed it open with her foot, and went along to the kitchen. She wanted a cup of tea, but she couldn’t make the effort to get it ready. She couldn’t even lie down. She sat on the step-ladder chair, straightening her aching back and supporting it with one hand while her eyes roved about her neat and dismal little domain, hoping to discover what she very well knew wasn’t there--something to eat, prepared and ready. She was beginning to be dulled and blunted by solitude. Her life’s incentive was gone; she had no reason for working and living other than an animal reason--to feed herself. Her spirit had no food, and it was perishing.