the now prosperous husband had allowed the family to live in a suburb, where the two younger daughters were “growing up respectable.” Certain of the visitors, although confronted by those mysterious and impersonal wrongs which are apparently inherent in the very nature of things, gave us glimpses of another sort of wisdom than that expressed in the assumptions that the decrees of Fate are immutable. Such a glimpse came to me through a conversation with a woman whose fine mind and indomitable spirit I had long admired; I had known her for years, and yet the recital of her sufferings, added to those the Devil Baby had already induced other women to tell me, pierced me afresh. The story of the Devil Baby may have incited these women to put their experiences more vividly than they had hitherto been able to do. It may have been because they were unconsciously spurred by the hope that a supernatural retribution might intervene even for them, or because they were merely comforted by the knowledge that it had once done so for some one else that they spoke with more confidence than they had ever done before. “I had eleven children, some born in Hungary and some born here, nine of them boys; all of the children died when they were little but my dear Liboucha. You know all about her. She died last winter in the Insane Asylum. She was only twelve years old when her father, in a fit of delirium tremens, killed himself after he had chased us around the room, trying to kill us first. She saw it all, the blood splashed on the wall stayed in her mind the worst; she shivered and shook all that night through, and the next morning she had lost her voice, couldn’t speak out loud for terror. After a while she went to school again and her voice came back, although it was never very natural. She seemed to do as well as ever and was awful pleased when she got into High School. All the money we had I earned scrubbing in a public dispensary, although sometimes I got a little more by interpreting for the patients, for I know three languages, one as well as the other. But I was determined that whatever happened to me, Liboucha was to be educated. My husband’s father was a doctor in the old country, and Liboucha was always a clever child. I wouldn’t have her live the kind of life I had, with no use for my mind except to make me restless and bitter. I was pretty old and worn out for such hard work, but when I used to see Liboucha on a Sunday morning ready for church in her white dress, with her long yellow hair braided round her beautiful pale face, lying there in bed as I was, being brought up a free-thinker, and needing to rest my aching bones for the next week’s work, I’d feel almost happy, in spite of everything. But of course no such peace could last in my life; the second year at High School Liboucha began to seem different and to do strange things. You know the time she wandered away for three days and we were all wild with fright, although a kind