Maria, in these last months, saw very little of Gladys, who had sunken entirely into the lower stratum of society in which she belonged. Gladys had left school, where she had not learned much, and she went out cleaning and doing house-work, at seventy-five cents a day. Sometimes Maria met her going to and fro from a place of employment, and at such times there was fear in Maria's face and a pathetic admiration and reassurance in the other girl's. Gladys had grown hard and large as to her bones and muscles, but she did not look altogether well. She had a half-nourished, spiritually and bodily, expression, which did not belie the true state of affairs with her. She had neither enough meat nor enough ideality. She was suffering, and the more because she did not know. Gladys was of the opinion that she was, on the whole, enjoying life and having a pretty good time. She earned enough to buy herself some showy clothes, and she had a lover, a "steady," as she called him. It is true that she was at times a little harassed by jealousy concerning another girl who had a more fully blown beauty than she, and upon whom she sometimes suspected her lover was casting admiring eyes. It was at this time that Gladys, whose whole literature consisted of the more pictorial of the daily papers, wrote some badly spelled and very pathetic little letters, asking advice as to whether a girl of her age, who had been keeping steady company with a young man of her lover's age, whom she dearly loved, should make advances if he seemed to exhibit a preference for another girl, and she inquired pitifully of the editor, as of some deity, as to whether she thought her lover did really prefer the other girl to her. These letters, and the answers, were a source of immense comfort to Gladys. Sometimes, when she met Maria, they made her feel almost on terms of equality with her. She doubted if Maria, smart as she was, had ever really appeared in the papers. She wrote her letters under different names, and even sent them from neighboring towns, and walked long distances, when she felt that she wanted to save car-fare, to post them. Once Maria met her as she was walking along with an evening paper in her hand, reading the reply to one of her letters, and Maria wondered at the expression on Gladys's face. She at once pitied, feared, and detested Gladys. She doubted if she were a good girl; she herself, like a nun without even dreams, seemed living in another sphere, she felt so far removed. She was in reality removed, although Gladys, if the truth were told, was not so bad, and she got some good advice from the answers in response to her letters, which restrained her. Still, her view of everything was different. She was different. Black was not as black to her as to Maria; a spade was not so truly a spade. She recognized immorality as a fact, but it did not seem to her of so much importance. In one sense she was more innocent even than Maria,