"It's awful up there, isn't it?" she remarked suddenly after we had discussed every possible cause for Bessie's absence. "Yes, isn't it?" I replied, somewhat surprised, for this was the first time the girl had ever expressed any opinion about anything, so fearful did she seem of betraying herself. "I suppose you often wonder what brought me there that night?" she went on. "You've told me your story, and you don't know anything at all about mine. You must often wonder, though you are too considerate to ask. But I'm going to tell you now without asking. It was to keep me from going there," pointing through the window down to the river. "I'd had a lot of trouble,--oh, a terrible lot of trouble,--and it seemed as if there wasn't any place for me; and I walked down to the edge of the river up there at the end of East Fourteenth Street, and something stopped me just when I was ready to jump in. Why I didn't, I don't know," and the girl turned a stony face to the window. "Why, it was hope and renewed courage, of course!" I replied quickly. "Everybody gets blue spells--when one is down on one's luck." Eunice shook her head. "No, it wasn't hope. It was because I was afraid--it was because I'm a coward. I'm too much of a coward to live, and I'm too much of a coward to die. You never felt as I do. You couldn't. I've lost my grip on everything. Everything's gone against me, and it's too late now for things to change. You don't know--_you don't know_, you and Bessie. If you did, you'd see how useless all your kindness is, in trying to get me to brace up. I've tried--my God! I have tried to feel that there's a life before me, but I can't--I can't. Sometimes, maybe for a minute, I'll forget what's gone by, and then the next minute the memory of it all comes back with a fearful stab. There is something that won't let me forget." "Hush! Eunice; don't talk so loud," I whispered as her passionate voice rose above the hum of the other girls in a far portion of the room. "I tell you it's no use--it's no use. I've lost my grip on things, and I can never catch hold again. I thought, maybe, when I started out with you and Bessie, and got to working again, there'd be a change. But there isn't any difference now from--from the night I went into that dormitory first. Now with you it would be different. What's happened to me might, maybe, happen to you; but you could fight it down. There's something inside of you that's stronger than anything that can hurt you from the outside. Most girls are that way. They get hurt--and hurt bad, and they cry a lot at the time and are miserable and unhappy; but after a while they succeed in picking themselves up, and are in the end as good, sometimes better, than ever. They forget in a little while all about it, and wind up by marrying some man who is really in love with them, and they are as happy as if nothing had ever happened."