over her story, tearing at her with their fangs, chewing her over with their tongues... Friends and acquain-tances abandoned her — those who draw near a person only for some end of their own, only for their private designs... Then before long the direc-tor of the company where she worked gave her to understand, gently and tactfully, that he regretted having to dismiss her from her work, because she had begun of late to neglect her duties, and had grown given to absences, forever glum and dazed.

So it was that she lost the one solace that helped her toward forgetting... Nor was fate content with this measure of cruelty; it went on to shower her with a hail of torments of every kind: she lost her mother, her one comfort — she who had always labored to lighten her burden, who had bent over her tenderly when everyone disowned her, and gathered her to herself with affection when near and far alike recoiled from her... Then his letters ceased, and she went half mad, spending the long hours weeping, sobbing, forever gazing toward the neighboring lane, in hope the postman might take pity on her and bring her what she was waiting for...

And fate would not rest until it had made her taste its torment in shapes and kinds without number; not content with the anguish of parting, the desolation of loneliness, and the cruelty of death, it brought down upon her a grave illness whose prey she remained for many months, during which she tasted pain in all its colors... Her color grew pale, her body wasted, and the marks of beauty faded from her face...

Why, then, should she go on living, when she had lost everything: lost family and friends and health and beauty... Why live, when she had become a heap of human refuse, thrown into a lonely corner of the stage of life... No one cares for her, and she cares for no one... No one knocks at her door, and she knocks at