When a woman once enters a house of prostitution and leads the life of those who dwell there, it is too late for redemption and there is no hope for her. When a woman once nerves herself for the fatal plunge, a change comes over her whole character and, sustained by outraged love, transformed into hate by miscalculating but indomitable pride, revenge and the excitement of her new environments, her fate is fixed, her doom is sealed. Hence this book, “TWENTY TALES BY TWENTY WOMEN.” A WOMAN’S ANGUISH. “Sitting alone by the window, watching the moonlit street; Bending my head to listen to the well known sounds of your feet; I have been wondering, darling, how I could hear the pain, When I watched with sighs and tear-wet eyes and waited your coming in vain. “For I know the day approaches when you will tire of me, When by the door I may watch and wait for the form I will not see; When the love that is now my heaven, the kisses that make my life, You will bestow on another, and that other will be your wife. “You will grow tired of serving, though you do not call it so; You will long for a love that is pure, the love that we two know. God knows that I loved you dearly, with a passion strong and pure, But you will grow tired and leave me though I gave up all for you. “I was pure as the morning when I first looked upon your face; I knew I never could reach you, on your high exalted place, But I looked and loved and worshiped, as a flower might worship a star, But your eyes shone down on me and you seemed so far, so far. “And then I knew that you loved me, loved me with all your heart, But we could not stand at the altar, we were so far apart; If a star would wed a flower, the star must drop from the sky, Or the flower, in trying to reach it, would droop on its stalk and die. “And you said that you loved me dearly, and swore by the heaven above, That the Lord and all His angels would sanction and bless our love, And I was weak, not wicked, my love was pure and true, And sin itself seemed a virtue, when only shared by you. “We have been happy together, though, under a cloud of sin; But I know that the day approaches when my chastening will begin. You have been faithful and tender, but you will not always be, And I think I had better leave you while your thoughts are kind of me. “Oh, God! I could never bear it; it would madden my brain, I know; So while you love me dearly, I think I had better go. It is sweeter to feel my darling, to know as I fall asleep, That some one will mourn and miss me, that some one is left to weep. “That to die as I would in the future, to fall in the street some day, Unknown, unwept and forgotten, when you have cast me away; Perhaps the blood of the Savior can wash my garments clean; Perchance I may drink the water that flows through the pastures green.