Clang, clang, clang, with a rattle and clatter and crash, a patrol wagon swung up to the curb--so close that a spatter of mud from the gutter fell on the woman's skirt. The wagon wheeled and backed. The police formed a quick lane across the sidewalk. The crowd surged forward and carried the woman close against the blue coated barrier. Down the lane held by the officers of the law, so close to the woman that she could have touched them, came two poor creatures who were not ignorant of what is commonly called the world. They had seen life--so the world would have said. They were wise. They had knowledge of many things of which the woman, who shrank back from them in horror, knew nothing. Their haggard, painted, faces, their disheveled hair, their tawdry clothing, false jewels, and drunken blasphemies, drew a laugh from the crowd. Upon the soul of the woman the laughter of the crowd fell like a demon laugh from the depths of hell. Almost she shrieked aloud her protest. Because she knew herself to be a woman, she almost shrieked aloud. It was over in an instant. The patrol wagon rumbled away with its burden of woe. The crowd melted as magically as it had gathered. At the entrance of the building where she worked, the woman turned to look back, as though fascinated by the horror of that which she had seen. But, upon the surface of that sea of life, there was not the faintest ripple to mark the spot of the tragedy. And the crowd had laughed. The woman knew the character of that place so near the building in which she worked. Several times, each day, she passed the swinging doors of the saloon below and, always, she saw men going in and out. Many times she had caught glimpses of the faces of those who occupied the rooms above as they watched at the windows. When first she went to work she had known little of such things, but she was learning. Not because she wished to learn but because she could not help it. But the knowledge of such things had come to her so gradually that she had grown accustomed to knowing even as she came to know. She had become familiar with the fact without being forced to feel. Perhaps, if the incident had occurred a few years later, when the woman's knowledge was more complete, she, herself, might have been able to laugh with the crowd. This knowledge that enables one so to laugh is, seemingly, much prized these days among those who have not the wisdom to value Ignorance. The afternoon passed, as such afternoons must, and the woman did her work. What mattered the work that was being wrought in the soul of her womanhood--the work committed to her hands--the work that refused to recognize her womanhood--_that_ work was done--and that is all that seems to matter. And, when her day's work was done, the woman boarded a car for her home.