“No, I was thinking if the moon would ever shine upon the night when I shall feel no more the pangs of hunger.”
I took her in my arms and wept, although her eyes were strangely tearless. She put out her hand and stroked away my tears.
“Don’t, dear,” she begged. “It is all right. It is only that there is no place for me. The niche I wish to fill has never been chiseled in the wall of this world’s matters. It is God’s mistake if one is made, and God must look to it. I tell you, Gertie,” and she rose up grandly in her pride and in her wrath, “there are but two niches made for woman in this world. There’s but one choice, wife or harlot. The poor, who refuse still to be vile, must step aside, since honest poverty by man’s decree is but a myth. There’s no room in this world for such.”
She was growing bitter, bitter, driving on, I thought, to that fatal rock from which the wrecks of lost women cry back to rail at God who would not save them from destruction, although they prayed aloud and shrieked their agony up heavenward, straight to His ears. I think sometimes I should not like to sit in God’s stead when such women come to face His judgment. Women who called, and called, and never had an answer, and so went down, still calling.
It was thus she called.
One day I came upon her where she had thrown herself upon a little garden stool to rest. A book lay on her knee, her eyes upon the page; and as I listened, for she read aloud, slowly, as when one reads to his own heart, I caught the meaning of the poet’s words as they had found interpretation by her:—
“‘For each man deems his own sand-house secure,
While life’s wild waves are lulled; yet who can say,
If yet his faith’s foundations do endure,
It is not that no wind hath blown that way?’”