“I—I won’t be hard on him, Lizzie.” The tears were rolling down her cheeks. “And now I’ll put out this light, and you’ll go to sleep, won’t you? And to-morrow I’ll see Dick and get a license, and—and everything.” “Oh, miss!” cried the girl—“not my lines?” “Yes, Lizzie! If you’re a good girl and go to sleep you shall have your lines to show.” Muriel left her. When she came back a few minutes later she found the exhausted girl fast asleep; her face was red and swollen still with crying, but there was a happy smile on her lips. She was only seventeen. “And there are thousands like this—thousands,” thought Muriel. “God forgive us our blindness and their pain.” Suddenly she felt very faint and dizzy. She remembered she had had nothing to eat since her tea with Mary Huntly. She covered her face with her hands, for she realized more overwhelmingly than ever that she could never marry Jack Hurstly. But though she had cried for the other girl, no tears came now. CHAPTER V “My God, I would not live, save that I think this gross, hard-seeming world Is our misshapen vision of the Powers behind the world that make our griefs our gains.” A BROAD-BUILT, hulking fellow with a coarse, brutal face shouldered his way towards Muriel. It was one of the men’s evenings, and she had dropped in a moment to speak to the superintendent, and to give one of the men something to take home to his sick wife. When the man reached her she led him to a quiet corner of the room. She had never felt afraid yet, nor did she feel so now; only as she looked at the flushed, scowling face she felt a little hopeless. “They said as ’ow you wanted to speak to me, miss.” “Yes, Dick, I do.” She paused, wondering how best to make her appeal to him—where in fact was that spark of the Divine she so passionately believed in, so seldom touched, yet trusted that she touched more often than she knew. “Lizzie is with me, Dick,” she said at last. “Do you think that you have treated her quite fairly?” The scowl changed to a senseless, meaning smile. Muriel felt her eyes flash, but she had herself well in hand. “Do you think it is quite a brave, manly thing to do,” she asked with slow, quiet intensity, “to ruin a girl’s life—a girl you pretend to care for—who has trusted in you? Would you not be ashamed of breaking your word to another man? Yet you seem to think it no great harm to betray a woman! A woman like Lizzie too, who is only a child after all, and who kept so straight. She is very ill indeed, Dick, and when—when the child is born I think she will die. Wouldn’t you call a man who had behaved so to your sister a—a murderer?” The man’s sullen eyes were fixed on the floor; he shifted awkwardly from one leg to the other. “I don’t see has ye ’ave hany call to speak to me like that, miss. I ain’t no worse than the other chaps I knows on. I’d like to do fair by Liz, but I ain’t earning enough to keep a wife.”