For Violet, meanwhile, the young interne's prophesy had been fulfilled. Four days after her admission to the hospital there had been performed upon her that operation which had been made necessary by her servitude, but to which, had she been consulted, her fears would never have allowed her to consent. For three weeks she lay in her narrow bed among other sufferers, and, when at last the fiction of discharging her as "cured" had been accomplished, and the five-cent carfare donated by the hospital to charity-patients had been given, she had been met by Katie and Carrie, and had tottered between them to their room. During another week she had now rested there. Her eyes were still sunken, dull, dark-rimmed; her cheeks white and transparently thin. The knuckles of her fingers seemed to have grown larger, and her hands were nearly transparent. But her lips, though bloodless, had gained a new firmness. Clearly or deeply she could never think, without help from a stronger and better mind; yet she had made what use she might of her long leisure and had resolved, more or less definitely, upon what she would do with her life. "I went out an' walked a block by myself yesterday," she confessed to her two friends early on the evening of Hermann's political discussion with his employer; "an' I didn't get any tired an' wasn't hardly any scared. Now I want you to take me for a longer walk to-night an' then by to-morrow I'll be all right." They protested that she must not spur her convalescence, but she was determined. It was, she knew, impossible for them much longer to support her, and the last of her one ten-dollar bill had long ago been spent. "I'll tell you what we might do," Carrie at last suggested. "There's some sort of a concert over at the settlement to-night. We might go to that. I used to know some of the ladies there, and there's always a chance that they can get you a job." While she was speaking Hermann's whistle, more cheerful now than when he had left the saloon, sounded on the stairs, and Katie, surprised and glad, opened the door to his knock. "Late to your work again," she said, with a smile that belied her. "How'll you ever be holdin' that job, anyhow?" The newcomer's only answer was a courageous and unrebuked kiss. He turned to Carrie. "Vat you sink of such a vay of meetin' me?" he appealed. "My boss gives me a nighd off, und I haf seen my girl not fur ten days und den----" He paused as his unrecognizing eye fell upon Violet. "Egscuse me," he began. "I didn't see----" "Of course you didn't see it was your old friend Violet that was an' Miss Morton that is," interrupted Katie, with a quick desire to shield her charge. "You're gettin' that near-sighted I wonder how you can tell a whiskey-glass from a beer-stein." Hermann hurried forward in rosy embarrassment and saved Violet from rising. He took her frail hand in his big paw and poured out a tumbling stream of polite lies upon the matter of her health.