Jean made no reply. Moved by the eloquent memory of Paul's many kindnesses and with the charity she hoped of others for herself, she did him the justice to believe him better than his lowest impulse. But while she was willing to grant that the Paul who, in the first shock of her revelation, thought all the world rotten, was not the real Paul, she would not have been the woman she was, had his offense failed to bar him from her life. Her decision was instinctive and instant, requiring no travail of spirit, though she could not escape subsequent heart-searchings whether she had unwittingly laid herself open to humiliation and a scorching shame that the dentist, or any man, could even for a moment have held her so cheap. Necessity turned her thoughts outward. The marriage plans had all but devoured her savings, and while she was clothed better than ever before, she lacked ready money for even a fortnight's board. Immediate employment was essential, yet, when canvassed, the things to which she might turn her hand were alarmingly few. After her experience with Meyer & Schwarzschild, she was loath to go back to her refuge-taught trade except as a last resort, while department-store life, as she had found it, seemed scarcely less repellent. At the outset it was her hope to secure somewhere a position like her last, but the advertisements yielded the name of only one dentist in need of an assistant, and this man had filled his vacancy before she applied. Thereafter she roamed the high seas of "Help Wanted: Female" without chart or compass. The newspapers teemed with offers of work for women's hands. The caption "Domestic Service" of course removed a host of them from consideration, and the demand for stenographers, manicures, and like specialized wage-earners disposed of many others; but, these aside, opportunity still seemed to beckon from infinite directions. Thus, the paper-box industry clamored for girls to seam, strip, glue, turn in, top-label, close, and tie; the milliners wanted trimmers, improvers, frame-makers, and workers in plumage and artificial flowers; the manufacturers of shirt-waists and infants' wear called for feminine fingers to hemstitch, shirr, tuck, and press; deft needles might turn their skill toward every conceivable object from theatrical spangles to gas-mantles; nimble hands might dip chocolates, stamp decorated tin, gold-lay books, sort corks, tip silk umbrellas, curl ostrich feathers, fold circulars, and pack everything from Bibles to Turkish cigarettes. But this prodigious demand, at first sight so promising, proved on close inspection to be limited. Beginners were either not wanted at all or, if taken on trial, were expected to subsist on charity or air. Experience was the great requisite. Day after day Jean toiled up murky staircases to confront this stumbling-block; day after day her resources dwindled.