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shrinking imagination: vile districts, nocturnal debauches, drunkenness, lewdness, what a hell!

No matter where she went it would be to this. Everywhere women would avoid her, men beset her, she would become a prostitute, a haunter of shadowy streets, a painted creature of slinking defiance, an apprehensive accoster of men to be spurned in silence, or accepted and used carelessly. To what end should she endure all this contempt and obscenity?—to live? Was that all? To eat, to sleep, to breathe!

Out of the increasing murmur to the south she heard a louder shriek of the approaching train. Now, in her changed mood, she knew that no train would ever bear her out of her great damnation. Mrs. Biggers's treatment had shown her that; a good woman, a charitable woman . . .

"I would rather die than lead such a life," she thought desperately. "God forgive me, but I'd rather die!"

She was hurrying now toward the depot. As she passed the dim lights of the first shop she hesitated momentarily between the last force of her old purpose and the beginning of a new and terrible resolution. The next moment she walked quickly past. Her check suddenly had become of no more importance than a wisp of blank paper; even the mob itself was becoming something far away and unrelated to her. There was, after all, a way for the train to bear her out of her misery.

Now at the approaching noise of the engine a sudden fear of missing it set the girl running toward a cross street she knew. This street led down to the railroad track at a point two or three hundred yards beyond the station. She must get to this street, get down to the track before the train left the station. It would remain there only two or three minutes. Her heart began beating as her purpose grew upon her.

The strangest notions began to swarm in Nessie’s head. She seemed to be running and stumbling in a nightmare; the occasional lighted door she passed, the mob which now had dwindled to a remote threat, all became part of this fluid