“‘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.”