Great tears rolled down the scarred face and splashed on those long talon shaped fingers. Then, with a shiver, she continued:
“The Bible says something about, if one marries a man to stick to him. My people all tried to get me to leave him, but woman-like I left them and my baby. I proposed to go where no one knew us and begin life over. He said if I would leave the ‘brat,’ he would go.
“We came to Chicago, but the same bitter feeling still existed in him. The evil mind brooded and the heart became affected until our lives were the lives of beasts. He lost one position after another. He began to drink and beat me terribly. Oh, sir, I would have stood all that, if he had only loved me. I would have willingly starved for bread if my heart could have had one morsel on which it might be sustained.
“Finally we took a large house and began to take roomers. We did well for a while; then things began to go wrong and he suggested that we rent rooms to people for immoral purposes. My soul revolted against it, sir; indeed it did, but I consented! Oh, sir, many’s the time I’ve cried when I would see some sweet faced girl come to our house, for, sir, I could not help thinking that some day my baby would grow up and she might become the prey of some vulture.”
As she progressed with her narrative she dropped the uncouth language of the locality in which she lived. The hot soup and the light, together with the living over the better times, seemed to have taken her out of herself for the time being.
“My husband drifted from one bad crowd of associates to another. At last he was arrested and convicted of stealing and was sentenced to the penitentiary. The disgrace which this brought upon me was so terrible that it overwhelmed me. I lost all respect for everything and everybody. I removed from the semi-respectable district into the more notorious and better advertised portion of the city, and became the landlady of one of the most notorious resorts of the day. I made many friends among the class into which this life had thrown me. I developed into a woman of beauty. I had fine clothes and precious gems; money came easily and was spent with a lavish hand. Still I maintained a business presence of mind which gained for my house a reputation of good order. One of the inmates of my place was a beautiful blonde. She was proud and set herself up as being the most bewitching woman in Chicago. She had a dear friend, a very wealthy man, who called on her with great regularity. One night, in a jest, he put his arm around me and remarked that he was tired of blondes, anyway. All the fury that God allowed one woman to possess, arose in that blonde when he said that. She swore and tore and raved like one possessed of demons. After that she and I quarreled often. I would not have taken her lover. I did not like him, but I could not get her to understand. It all ended by her forcing her friend to take a magnificent house next door to mine. It was lavishly furnished and I soon had a rival in business that made that quarter of Chicago more famous than ever.
“One day I met her admirer on the street, the first time I had ever talked with him since the gun was fired which had kept me in an incessant battle. He told me many things that she had said of me, which, in addition to the insults she had heretofore heaped upon me, made me boil.
“Eighteen years had passed since my heart had been transformed from the organ of anticipation to the soul of a young mother, and a woman can grow very hard in that time; she can nerve herself to do anything at anyone’s cost, in order to crush a rival. I forgot all the goodness I had ever known. I did not want this man myself, but I wanted to sting his inamorata so as to cause her the most intense pain and mortification. I proposed to him that if he would abandon this woman I would get him a nice young girl.
“‘Agreed,’ said he, ‘I will do that and it won’t be long till you’ll have the business of the block all your way again, for when I turn the ‘old girl’ down, the whole gang will quit her house.’