Annie sat and watched him, wishing she could suggest some way to solve the problem that troubled him. She loved her husband with all her heart and soul. His very weakness of character endeared him the more to her. She was not blind to his faults, but she excused them. His vices, his drinking, cigarette smoking and general shiftlessness were, she argued, the result of bad associates. He was self-indulgent. He made good resolutions and broke them. But he was not really vicious. He had a good heart. With some one to watch him and keep him in the straight path, he would still give a good account of himself to the world. She was confident of that. She recognized many excellent qualities in him. They only wanted fostering and bringing out. That was why she married him. She was a few years his senior; she felt that she was the stronger mentally. She considered it was her duty to devote her life to him, to protect him from himself and make a man of him. It was not her fault, she mused, if she were not a lady. Literally brought up in the gutter, what advantages had she had? Her mother died in childbirth and her father, a professional gambler, abandoned the little girl to the tender mercies of an indifferent neighbor. When she was about eight years old her father was arrested. He refused to pay police blackmail, was indicted, railroaded to prison and died soon after in convict stripes. There was no provision for Annie's maintenance, so at the age of nine she found herself toiling in a factory, a helpless victim of the brutalizing system of child slavery which in spite of prohibiting laws still disgraces the United States. Ever since that time she had earned her own living. The road had often been hard, there were times when she thought she would have to give up the fight, other girls she had met had hinted at an easier way of earning one's living, but she had kept her courage, refused to listen to evil counsel and always managed to keep her name unsullied. She left the factory to work behind the counter in a New York dry goods store. Then about a year ago she drifted to New Haven and took the position of waitress at the restaurant which the college boys patronized.