“Well, what would you think,” he suggested, “of ‘asking’ for a system more interested in conserving nervous systems than in producing millionaires?

“Why, yes,” he added, “in view of the fact that it has to make a few men rich, perhaps they are doing all they can.  I don’t doubt that they think they are.  But if this were a thing that didn’t have to produce wealth—­then it wouldn’t need to endanger health.  Don’t you think that in this nerve-blighting work four or five hours, instead of eight, would be a pretty good day’s work for girls just out of short clothes?”

“It would seem so,” sighed Katie, as she left the room filled with girls answering calls—­girls looking too worn to respond to any “call” life might have for them.

Though when, a little later, they stood in the doorway watching a long line of them passing out into the street it was amazing how ready and how eager they seemed for what life had to offer them.  They all looked tired, but many appeared happy—­determined that all of life should not be going over the wire.  It seemed to Katie the most wonderful thing she knew of that girls from whom life exacted so much could remain so ready—­so happily eager—­for life.

There was one thing to which she had made up her mind.  Amid the confusion of her thinking and the sadness of her spirit one thing she saw as clear.  There was something wrong with an arrangement of life which struck that hard at life.  The very fact that the capacity for life persisted through so much was the more reason for its being a thing to be cherished rather than sacrificed.

“Let’s walk up this way,” she was saying; “walk over the river.  The bridge is a good place just now.”

Katie’s face was white and tense as some of the faces they had left behind “No,” he said impetuously.  “Let’s not.  Let’s do something jolly!”

She shook her head “I have a feeling we’re going to find her to-night.”

Katie was always having that feeling.  But as she looked then he had not the heart to remind her of the many times it had played her false.

Many girls passed them on the bridge, but not Ann.  “I can never make up my mind to go,” she said.  “I always think I ought to wait till the next one comes round the corner.”

A girl who appeared to be thinking deeply passed them, turning weary eyes upon them in languid interest.

“I wonder what,” Katie exclaimed.  “What she’s thinking about,” she explained.  “Maybe she’s come to the end of her string—­and if she has, hundreds of thousands of people about her—­oh I think it’s terrible”—­her voice broke—­“the way people are crowded so close together—­and held so far apart.  Everybody’s alone.  Nobody knows.”

For a second his hand closed over hers as it rested on the railing of the bridge, as if he would bear some of the hurt for her, that hurt she was finding in everything.

Despite the extreme simplicity of her dress she looked out of place standing on that bridge at that hour; he was thinking that she had not lost her distinction with her buoyancy.