"Marriage didn't mean anything to either of them. How could it, coming up the way they had? though she'd never been like the other girls. You can't think how they could be the heathen they were? Remember what you've seen an' heard in this very place, an' then remember that ten years ago, even, a decent man or woman didn't dare go up these alleys even by daylight, an' the two or three missionaries were in danger of their lives; an' you'll see how much chance they'd had of learning. "Nan wasn't sixteen then, an' she didn't think ahead, though if she had likely she would have done the same. She had her choice, but she'd always known Charley, an' so it ended that way. "Then came a long time when my own troubles were thick, an' I went off to the country an' lost sight of her. It was two years before I came back, an' then everything was changed. All that set I'd known seemed to have gone to the bad together--some in prison and some dead. Jerry was out then, an' we were married an' began together in the little room down the street; an' now I thought often of Nan. They told me Charley was drinkin' himself to death, an' that she was at the theatre still, an' kept things goin' with her money, an' that he knocked her round, when he was out of his head, the worst way. It wasn't long before I went to her. She looked so beautiful you wouldn't think a fiend could want to hurt her, an' her eyes had just the look of that picture. I told her how I had turned about, an' how happy we both were, in spite of hard times an' little work; but she listened like one in a dream, an' I knew enough to see that I should have to tell her many times before she would understand or care. But she seemed so frail I couldn't bear to leave her so. An' the worst of it was, that she'd begun to wish Charley would marry her, an' he thought it was all nonsense, an' swore at her if she said a word about it. She'd been gettin' more and more sensible, an' he'd just been goin' the other way, but she kept her old fondness for him. I said nothing then, but one day I found her cryin', an' her arm so she could hardly move it; an' it came out he'd knocked her down, an' told her she could clear out when she liked, for he was sick of her pale face an' her big eyes an' her airs, an' meant to bring a woman there with some life in her." "'Things don't come out as we plan,' she said. 'I was going to be a lady, but I forgot that anybody had anything to do with it but myself. An' now I can't go to any decent place, an' Charley doesn't want me any longer. See how nice it all looks here, Maria. I've fixed it myself, an' I've always been so glad that after the play was over I could come _home_--not to somebody else's room, but my own place--an' I never thought there was any reason why it wouldn't always be my place. Men aren't like women. I was true to Charley, and I'll never think of anybody else; but he says I must get out of this.'