CHAPTER II
IN THE DEPTHS
All the week the two girls worked together at the mill; a week which was to Helen one long nightmare, filled, as it was, with the hum and roar of machinery, the hot breath of the mill, and worst of all, the seared and deadening thought that she was disgraced.
In the morning she entered the mill hoping it might fall on and destroy her. At night she went home to a drunken father and a little sister who needed, in her childish sorrow, all the pity and care of the elder one.
And one night her father, being more brutal than ever, had called out as Helen came in: “Come in, my mill-girl!”
Richard Travis always drove her home, and each night he became more familiar and more masterful. She felt,—she knew—that she was falling under his fascinating influence.
And worse than all, she knew she did not care.
There is a depth deeper even than the sin—the depth where the doer ceases to care.
Indeed, she was beginning to make herself believe that she loved him—as he said he wished her to do—and as he loved her, he said; and with what he said and what he hinted she dreamed beautiful, desperate dreams of the future.