"He left me desperate! 'Twas then I had my hardest fight. Oh, madam, I sometimes wonder if good women know—the sheltered, favored ones who will not have us in their homes after our one false step, how hard it is then for us to keep from going down. They surely cannot know!—how we are tempted by our poverty and want of work.... You see there are so many pitfalls for our feet! Oh, there are hands held out!—the hands that drag us down! And doors that open—but they are the gates of hell!"
She sank back exhausted. But after a moment she went on:
"Madam, I was often hungry in those days,—was oftener cold,—and sometimes had not where to lay my head; but I swear to you I kept myself from evil for my child, and I kept my child. Then one day a fever fell upon me, and some ladies came and took my baby to the Children's Home and me to the hospital. It was typhoid fever, caused by unsanitary food the doctor said (you see when one is starving she cannot stop to ask if this or that is sanitary, so long as it is food), and for many weeks I lay delirious.
"I was just ready to be discharged from the hospital when one day I read in the paper that this man had come back to Washington. I laid the paper down and thought long and hard. I knew that he was wealthy—had money that he could not use, 'twas said. I determined to go to him and ask him once for all to settle on me or his child a sum sufficient to support us in a humble way—oh, a very humble way—only so that I could have my baby with me and be sure of bread. You do not think that was too much to ask?"
"No! no!"
"I went straight to him from the hospital. I think—perhaps—I was not quite myself, though I seemed well. The doctor here tells me (I have asked him since) that often typhoid leaves a patient for months in a bewildered state of mind—'confusional insanity' I think they call it—and—I do not know—but I have thought that—perhaps—perhaps it was—"
Her eyes were fixed on vacancy, a wistful troubled look in them, as if, forgetful of her auditor, she were laboring upon some unsolved problem.
"You found him in?" asked Margaret, gently recalling her.
"Oh, yes—yes. I found him in. He was sitting at his desk—"
She stopped abruptly. Margaret was leaning forward, one hand clutching the rail of the iron bed, the other clenched in her lap.