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expensive hose, and peering with one eye at the window mirrors to see if any one was standing beside her. This last month had been a difficult one. It had been cold. Most of the men who might have picked her up were out of work. So she walked on down the street, her eyes swinging to the left and right, staring into faces coming toward her without ever moving her head, waiting eagerly for some faint intimation from some one that he had been attracted. All the men seemed to be walking rapidly with their heads down, their breathvaporing out on the cold air, men with black mustaches and full, ruddy faces and tall, slim, cold-looking men. Midge began to rub her hands together. The old kid gloves were thin. For the first part of the evening she would hope desperately that it would not be necessary to speak to any one and that some fellow of his own accord would follow her. Night after night, especially now in the winter, when so few seemed interested in her, it was getting harder and harder to speak to them when she knew they would refuse. When they kept on shaking their heads it got so that she did not expect them to want her.
    Then she began to feel cold; hardly any one seemed to be on the street, so she went into a corner restaurant to have a cup of coffee. The hot coffee warmed her. Feeling more hopeful, she sat at the table demurely. The crowds would soon be coming out of the theatres.
    If it had not been for her shabby clothes and a slyness in her eyes, Midge might have looked wistful, sitting at the white-topped table in the almost deserted restaurant. Four years ago she had been living in Montreal. She had been the oldest girl in their large family, and her mother and father had expected her to stay at home and help with the house and children. In the afternoon she had got into the habit of walking down by the docks and the riverside and looking at the ships from strange places and hearing the rough voices of seamen shouting in a language she did not understand. She used to look for a long time at the immense blueness of the wide St. Lawrence, flowing with such a dreadful steadiness toward the open sea. Down by the waterfront men laughed and spoke to her and hollered after her when she hurried away, full of excitement. At home her mother always seemed to be sick, or preparing for another child. Midge did the housework and dreamed of the streets at the waterfront, and the streets full ofnoise and shouting by the warehouses, and the streets by the big hotels in the evening.
    Her first lover, a boy out of work named Joseph, took her to the all-night cafés and got her for his girl that winter, and she came to see him every afternoon. Her mother used to look at her sorrowfully when she went out on those afternoons, as if she knew all that was happening to her daughter, but was afraid to remonstrate for fear of driving her away from home.
    Then she left Montreal with a lover named Andy, who lived with her for two months. They had been very much in love, she thought at the time. He used to run his hand through her black hair. They used to walk together in the fine spring evenings, with him smiling down into her face and holding her arm so tight, walking in the spring evenings all around the city parks and out by the lakeshore, making plans, following the crowds. And when he left her she was wild with resentment. For a time she was without any feeling. The first man that wanted her took her, a friend of Andy’s, though she could hardly remember that time with him. Looking back, that friend of Andy’s hardly seemed a part of her life, she could hardly remember his name. And after that no one stayed with her very long, but she went from one to another for a place to live.
    The rich odors of cooking food and the hot coffee warmed Midge as she sat alone in the restaurant. She smiled to herself, for she thought suddenly of Father Dowling’s eager, earnest face. “He’s very nice. There’s a lot of fun in him. I