The woman rose, and tried to speak, but sank sobbing: "Thank God! Thank God! Thank God!" When the first flood of grateful emotion had spent itself, she looked up at Norman and said: "You see, sir, he wasn't strong, and kept losin' his job in Chicago. We'd heard about California all our lives. We sold out everything and got enough to come. For two years we've made a hard fight, but it was no use. Jim couldn't git work. I tried and I couldn't. Folks have helped us, but he was proud. He wouldn't beg and he wouldn't let me. He wouldn't sell his gun. I think he always meant to use it that way when he got to the end, and it come yesterday when they give us notice to git out." She staggered over to the bed and fell across the body, sobbing: "My poor old boy. He loved me. He was always good to me. I tried to go with him. But I couldn't pull the trigger! I was afraid! I was afraid!" When they reached the street, Barbara lifted her brown eyes to Norman's face and asked: "What do you think of a social system that drives thousands of men to kill themselves like that?" "To tell you the truth I never thought of it at all before." "He would have been buried in a pauper's grave but for your help. I brought you here this morning because I knew you would save her that anguish when you understood." "You knew I would?" he softly asked. "I wouldn't have let you come with me if I hadn't known it," she answered, earnestly. "It's funny how many of us live in this world without knowing anything about it," he said, musingly. "It would be funny were it not a tragedy," she answered, turning across the street to the next block. They paused at the entrance of another narrow hallway. "My work as secretary of the club includes, as you see, a wide range of calls. I'm a dispenser of alms, the pastor of a great parish, the friend, adviser, and champion of a lost world, and you have no idea what a big world it is." "I'm beginning to understand. What's the trouble here? Another suicide?" "No--something worse, I think. A man who was afraid to die and took to drink. That's the way with most of them. None but the brave can look into the face of Death. This man is good to his family until he's drunk. Drink is the only thing that makes life worth the candle to him. But when he's under the influence of liquor he's a fiend. Last night he beat his wife into insensibility. This morning he sent one of the children for me." They climbed two flights of rickety stairs and entered a room littered with broken furniture. Every chair was smashed, the table lay in splinters, pieces of crockery scattered everywhere, and the stove broken into fragments. Two blear-eyed children with the look of hunted rabbits crouched in a corner. A man was bending over the bed, where the form of a woman lay still and white.