“You don’t seem to believe it,” she resumed. “I don’t tell lies. It’s the truth that has generally cursed me.”
“Then why are you walking up and down here at this time of night?”
“Doing rescue work.”
“Have you rescued any one yet?” asked Joyce, with a touch of sarcasm.
“No. I scarce expect to.”
“Then why are you trying?”
“Because it’s the beastliest thing I could think of doing,” she said, stopping abruptly, and facing him, as he turned, in the defiant way he remembered from the theatre days.
“You ’re an odd girl,” he said.
“You don’t suppose I wear this disgusting bonnet and get hustled by roughs and blackguarded by women because I like it! I haven’t been converted, and I don’t shriek out ‘Hallelujah,’ and I won’t,—but I earn an honest living at the Shelter during the day, and at night I come out. It’s the beastliest thing I can think of doing,” she repeated. “If I knew of anything beastlier I’d do it. I ’ve had flames inside me since I gave you away,—I’d have killed myself for you after,—and hell since I went on the streets,—but I think the other was worse. I ’ve learned what you felt like; now I’m trying to burn out the fire—”
“Stop for a moment,” he said, with a queer catch in his throat. “Do you mean you are doing this for your own inner self?”