The other looked at her keenly and a little dubious, and then she said, with a toss of her head, as something seemed to have occurred to her when the other looked at her strangely: "I guess you wonder _what I_ am doing down here, too." The other started, and her lips opened to say she had not, but before she could say anything, the other continued: "Well, I don't mind admitting what _I_ am doing down here, since I see _you_ here, also; but I have been coming down here for a long time. Yes, you see this is not the first time. I have been down here before," and she laughed a hard laugh, as she ended with another toss of her head. Mildred stood frozen. She could not collect her shattered wits to say anything, but she was thinking. Miss Jones was a member of Wilson Jacobs' church and sang in the choir. "It can't be possible!" she murmured inaudibly. "It can't be possible!" And then, all of a sudden, she felt sorry for Miss Jones, because she had liked her, and thought her very sweet. And now she met her face to face _in the worst_ part of the city! How could this be explained! Miss Jones being encountered in the _worst part_ of the city!... And Miss Jones had, with her own lips, admitted that 'she had been there before. _She had been coming there for a long time._' "Oh, God," Mildred cried almost aloud: "This is terrible!" _Why_ did Miss Jones come to this part of town?... Miss Jones came to this part of town and _knew_ she was doing so.... Then, if that were true--which it surely was--Miss Jones was _a bad girl_.... Miss Jones a _bad girl_? She could not believe it; and yet, before she could get all this through her whirling brain, she heard Miss Jones speaking again. What was she saying? It couldn't be true! Surely Miss Jones could not mean what she was saying. Oh, horrors! If Miss Jones meant what she was saying, then, Miss Jones regarded her as a _bad girl_, too. "Miss Jones, Miss Jones!" Something in her now was crying, although her lips moved not. "Please don't, please don't! I am not that way. I am not a _bad girl_, oh, no, please, _please_!" And still her lips had not moved. She stood like a dumb person; but she heard Miss Jones clearly: "Let's go over here to a place _I know_," she said. "It's safe--nobody but a swell bunch goes there, no tramps or _talkers_." She felt all she had heard a moment before now running through her mind, and yet she did not speak. Miss Jones was speaking again: "We are both in the same boat; one's as _bad_ as the other. No questions asked...." "Oh, Miss Jones," Mildred heard again, but her lips still were not moved. "How can you, oh, how can you!" Why _didn't_ she do something? She heard herself, but words were not spoken: "Why _do_ you stand, Mildred Latham? Why do you not go--_hurry_? You have stood _too_ long now. Hurry, hurry! To Mother Jane's--to Jacobs! Yes, to anywhere; but go, go, go!" And still she stood in flesh, and made no reply.