The eyes of Yetta's soul swung back and forth from one vision to the other. Through the long evening she knelt there by the window, so forgetful of her body that she did not realize how the dirty window ledge was cutting into her elbows, how her knees were being bruised on the unswept floor. At last the musicians put away their instruments. Every one clapped insistently and crowded about Miss Brail. But she waved her watch in their face. A distant church-bell tolled midnight. Yetta stayed at her post until the last laughing couple had shaken hands with the ladies at the door. For several minutes more she watched the shadows on the upper windows, while the "residents" talked over the success of the dance. She watched till the last light was out, then she crept back to bed and cried herself to sleep. The tears she shed that night were not the kind that heal. There was acid in them which ate into the quick. For nearly four years her body had been on the rack. Now her soul was being torn. The questionings which had troubled her after Rachel's disappearance became more and more insistent. Was she never to know what joy meant? Was day to crawl along after day in desolate and weary monotony? Was this dull ache of soul-hunger never to be relieved until some indefinite future was to find her--cheated of everything--cast out useless on the human refuse heap? Was this weary plain of uneventfulness never to be broken by any dazzling mountain peaks nor shady valley? Shortly after the Settlement Ball, which Yetta had watched as a starveling beggar peers through a baker's window, Life suddenly opened up. The drab monotony was illumined by a lurid display of fireworks. Rockets of glaring, appalling red shot up into the night. There was a great white blaze of hope, and all the sky became suffused by the soft caressing colors of unsophisticated Romance. The sweat-shop motor broke down. Jake Goldfogle cursed and tore his hair. He kept his "hands" waiting in idleness half through the afternoon, until the electricians had come and said that the damage could not be righted till midnight. Then Jake surlily dismissed his women. It was rare that Yetta had such a holiday. There was no reason for her to go to her dreary home. It was a precocious spring day, the sun shone with a heat that made the streets attractive. Wandering about aimlessly, Yetta came to Hamilton Fish Park. The faint suggestion of rising sap which came to her in that open space seemed infectious. The questionings which had disturbed her returned with new force. Why? What did it all mean? Was there no escape? Suddenly her attention was caught by a familiar figure, Rachel, arrayed in cheap finery. Yetta quickened her pace to overtake her and called her. It was a great shock to Rachel when she recognized her. She stared at her in bewilderment, but it was surely Yetta,--Yetta of the old life, of the great sad eyes, with the same old shawl over her head.