But she was not to be stopped. “Everybody said I was a fool; but I went an' done it, 'cause you swore you'd never hold it up to me! An' I went an' had them children”--Lizzie swept her arm at the children, as if to wipe them off the earth, to which they had come by a cruel mistake. Jimmie Junior, who was old enough to know that something serious was happening, and whose instinct was all against being wiped off the earth, began to howl wildly; and that set off the little ones--soon they were all three of them going at the top of their lungs. “Boo-hoo-hoo!” It was truly a terrible climax to a romance. Jimmie, almost distracted, seized the hand of his injured spouse. “It's all nonsense!” he cried. “What they been tellin' you! I ain't done a thing, Lizzie! I only walked home with her one night.” But Lizzie answered that one night was plenty enough--she knew that from intimate and hateful experience. “And I know them fluffy-headed kind that frizzes their hair. What does she want to walk home at night with married men fer? And talkin' about the things she does--” “She don't mean no harm, Lizzie--she's tryin' to help workin' women. It's what's called birth control--she wants to teach women--” “If she wants to TEACH women, why don't she TALK to the women! What's she all the time talkin' to MEN fer? You think you can tell me tales like that--me, that's been what I have?” And Lizzie went off into another fit, worse than ever. VI Jimmie found that it was with romance as with martyrdom--there was a lot of trouble about it which the romancers did not mention. He really felt quite dreadful, for he had a deep regard for this mother of his little ones, and he would not have made her suffer for anything. And she was right, too, he had to admit--her shots went deep home. “How'd you feel, if you was to find out I'd been walkin' home with some man?” When it was put to him that way, he realized that he would have felt very badly indeed. A flood of old emotions came back to him. He went in memory with his group of roystering friends to the house of evil where he had first met Elizabeth Huszar, pronounced Eleeza Betooser. She had taken him to her room, and instead of making herself agreeable in the usual way, had burst into tears. She had been ill-treated, and was wretchedly lonely and unhappy. Jimmie asked why she did not quit the life, and she answered that she had tried more than once, but she could not earn a living wage; and anyhow, because she was big and handsome, the bosses would never let her alone, and what was the difference, if you couldn't keep away from the men?