“I had become so attached to this man of genial nature that I was quick to become interested in anything which was of importance to him. He came again in two weeks, and with him came the boy. I met them in the parlor of a hotel, and oh, how my heart fluttered as I saw the youngster; all the love, pity and compassion of my happier days rushed back into the places of my nature, which had been devoid of anything sweet for the last six years. The boy was standing with his back to me talking to his father. As I approached with outstretched hand to welcome my friend, who stood with his back to the mirror, he reached out to clasp mine and stepped slightly to one side, revealing the complete image of the child in the mirror. “God only knows what I suffered in that one brief second. The picture I saw there in the frame of the mirror was more vivid than any work of art ever produced. My own child stood beside me. The hardening process of years did much to assist me in my self-control. We went to dinner; my friend was aware of my unhappy state of mind and questioned me closely. I could not tell him the whole truth; I simply told him that I had been married and that I had had a boy so much like this adopted son that the sight of his boy had refreshed my memory, had recalled the sad hour of parting with him when I had to give him up.” “‘And his father—is he dead, too?’ he asked, as he gently put his arm around me. “‘Yes,’ I sobbed, ‘dead, everything is dead to me.’ “My sufferings must have touched the strings of his harp of love and caused a melody to re-echo from his soul. “‘Come, and be a mother to my little chap,’ said he. “‘Oh, please don’t! I beg of you not to punish me by such jests.’ “‘But I mean it.’ “I hope that God in his goodness will never allow any poor woman to suffer as I did. I would have gladly gone, but no, I could not marry one man when I was the legal wife of another. Oh, I wanted to go so much, but I could not. I loved my child too purely to go and be a mother to him, while I was mistress to the one whom he was to know as a father. “That night ended my downward flight; I felt in my own mind that I had reached the bottomless pit of degradation, so low, so impure, so tainted with vice, that I dared not take my own child in my arms and lavish that love on him which was now consuming me, for fear that the taste of bliss would plunge me into a sea of desperation and cause me to commit myself in some way that would contaminate his sweet, young life. “I had saved some money, enough to live on while I served an apprenticeship in a sewing shop. I have taught myself the lessons of economy and domesticity so necessary to one who intends to follow the life of humble purity.”