“Ja--ja,” she sobbed--“so sweet, so good--so quiet--so beautiful she was. I was very happy--like a little girl with a doll--only she laugh and cry and coo and pull my hair! He stop the drink a little while when she come, and he got work. And then he begin worse and worse. It seem like he never loved me any more after the baby. He curse me, he quarrel. He begin to strike me sometimes. I laugh and cry at first and make up and try again----” Again she paused as if for courage to go on, and choked into silence. “Yes--and then?” the girl asked. “And then he come home one night wild drunk. He stumble and fall across the cradle and hurt my baby so she never cry--just lie still and tremble--her eyes wide open at first and then they droop and close and she die! “He laugh and curse and strike me, and I fight him like a tiger. He was strong--he throw me down on the floor and gouge my eye out with his big claw----” “Oh, my God,” Mary sobbed. Ella sprang to her feet and bent over the girl with trembling eagerness. “You keep my secret, meine liebe?” “Yes--yes----” “I never tell a soul on earth what I tell you now--I just eat my heart out and keep still all the years, I can tell you--ja?” “Yes, I'll keep it sacred--go on----” “When I know he gouge my eye out, I go wild. I get my hand on his throat and choke him still. I drag him to the stairs and throw him head first all the way down to the bottom. He fall in a heap and lie still. I run down and drag him to the door. I kick his face and he never move. He was dead. I kick him again--and again. And then I laugh--I laugh--I laugh in his dead face--I was so glad I kill him!” She sank in a paroxysm of sobs on the floor, and the girl touched her smooth black hair tenderly, strangled with her own emotions. Ella rose at last and brushed the tears from her hollow cheeks. “Now, you know, meine liebe! Why I tell you this today, I don't know--maybe I must! I dream once like you dream today----” The girl slipped her arms around the drooping, pathetic figure and stroked it tenderly. “The sunshine is for some, maybe,” Ella went on pathetically; “for some the clouds and the storms. I hope you are very, very happy today and all the days----” “I will be, Ella, I'm sure. I'll always love you after this.” “Maybe I make you sad because I tell you----” “No--no! I'm glad you told me. The knowledge of your sorrow will make my life the sweeter. I shall be more humble in my joy.” It never occurred to the girl for a moment that this lonely, broken woman had torn her soul's deepest secret open in a last pathetic effort to warn her of the danger of her marriage. The wistful, helpless look in her eye meant to Mary only the anguish of memories. Each human heart persists in learning the big lessons of life at first hand. We refuse to learn any other way. The tragedies of others interest us as fiction. We make the application to others--never to ourselves.