At times she would look about her, and the surroundings would become blurred, as if she had been weeping. The hastening people moved as if through a heavy mist and the announcer's voice, at intervals, boomed out loudly and called names that suggested nothing to her. Again her vision might clear and she would notice little trivial things, a bewildered woman dragging a pup that was most unwilling, a child hauling a bag too heavy for him, a big negro with thumbs in the armholes of his vest, yawning ponderously. For the hundredth time she looked at the big clock and found that she still had over an hour to wait for her train. Again she lost sight of the ever-changing throngs, of the massive structure in which she seemed to be lost, and the roar of the traffic faded away in the long backward turning of her brain, delving into the past. There was the first timid yet hopeful coming to the big city and the discovery that a fair high-school education, with some knowledge of sewing and fancywork, was but poor merchandise to exchange for a living. Her abundance of good looks, at that time, had proved nothing but a hindrance and a danger. Then had come the bitter toil for a pittance, and sickness, and the hospital, and the long period of convalescence during which everything but the ring had been swept away. She had met the sharp tongues of slatternly, disappointed landladies, while she looked far and wide for work. At first she had been compelled to ask girls on the street for the meaning of cards pasted on windows or hanging in doorways. Words such as "Bushel girls on pants" or "Stockroom assistants" had signified nothing to her. Month by month she had worked in shops and factories where the work she exacted from her ill-nourished body sapped her strength and thinned her blood. Nor could she compete with many of the girls, brought up to such labor, smart, pushing, inured to an existence carried on with the minimum of food and respirable air. The red came to her cheeks again as she remembered insults that had been proffered to her. It deepened further as she thought of that paper picked up on a bench of a little city square. The fear of having made a terrible mistake returned to her, more strongly than ever. Her efforts towards peace now seemed immodest, bold, unwomanly. But that first vision had been so keen of a quiet-voiced man extending a strong hand to welcome and protect as he smiled at her in pleasant greeting! Her vague notions of a far country in which was no wilderness of brick and mortar but only the beauty of smiling fields or of scented forests had filled her heart with a passionate longing. And the last thing the doctor had told her, in the hospital, was that she ought to live far away from the city, in the pure air of God's country. It was with a hot face and a throbbing heart that she now remembered the poor little letters she had written. Even the sending of that telegram now filled her with shame. And yet....