"Why should you go to ruin here?" she comforted her. "You just now gave me such splendid advice about how to keep from going to ruin. Besides, you have a mainstay in your art which I lost long ago." She looked with a sigh at the sample closets, in which the last of her pressed-flower woods reposed unseen. "No, you won't go to ruin You will reach the heights, from which you will look down on us poor women." Mrs. Jula sobbed on her shoulder. "Never again, never again," she wailed. "I can't pull myself out of this whirlpool. It's as if I were poisoned. My brain is poisoned. I'm going to ruin. I'm going to ruin." Lilly clasped her gently under the arm, and led her back to the unlighted drawing-room, and seated her in the corner of the sofa where she had sat before. "It's nice and dark here," Mrs. Jula said, whimpering like a child. "So I'm going to confess everything, everything. But close the door. There mustn't be a ray of light." Lilly closed the door of the dining-room. They now sat in darkness. The evening dusk reflected from the canal through the chestnut trees, still thinly leaved, poured a vapoury grey over the tear-stained face. "Before," began Mrs. Jula, "I told you of a woman who seeks her adventures on the street, and you jumped up in horror. Do you know who that woman is? _I_ am that woman." "For God's sake!" cried Lilly. "Yes, I am that woman. The evenings my red-head leaves me alone, I put on dark clothes, and go to parts where no one who knows me is likely to meet me. If somebody I come across pleases me, I give him a look--as a rule he turns back and speaks to me--and I go with him to common saloons, or to a little confectionery shop--anywhere he wants to. Or I sit with him on a bench in the dark--and if he pleases me still more--I go with him--wherever else he wants to." "Oh, how terrible!" cried Lilly, pressing her hands to her eyes. Now she knew why a few months before something had been pulling her to the street all the time, all the time; why a delicious shiver had coursed through her body when a man spoke to her in the dark. She had simply been too fearsome to answer him. "Now that you know what I am, you won't want me to stay sitting here on your sofa," cried Mrs. Jula. "Be perfectly frank. I'm ready to go." She reached out pleadingly for Lilly's hands. Lilly seemed to herself like a Good Samaritan who has met one who is grievously ill and must render that assistance which the moment requires. "But why do you do it?" she asked gently. "You are not so lonely. How did it come about?" "Yes, how did it come about? Do you know how _your_ life turned out as it did? It's all very well and good for people to reproach us with weakness. One necessity always holds out its hand to another. Each wish gives birth to another. And you always think you're doing what is right and what fate has prescribed." "That's true," faltered Lilly, recalling the decisive moments of her own life.