“A—­week!” Millie whistled.  “And I suppose ten hours a day, or worse, and I suppose work that would kill an ox.”

“Yes,” said Rhona, “hard work.”

Millie sat down and put an arm about the shrinking girl.

“Say, kiddie, I like you.  I’m going to chuck a little horse sense at you.  Now you listen to me.  My sister worked in a pickle-place over in Pennsy, and she lasted just two years, and then, galloping consumption, and—­” She snapped her fingers, her voice became husky.  “Poor fool!  Two years is the limit where she worked.  And who paid the rent?  I did.  But of course I wasn’t respectable—­oh no!  I was a sinner.  Well, let me tell you something.  In my business a woman can last five to ten years.  Do you blame me?  And I get clothes, and the eats, and the soft spots, and I live like a lady....  That’s the thing for you!  Why do you wear yourself out—­slave-work and strikes and silly business?...  You’ll never get married....  The work will make you a hag in another year or two, and who will want you?  And say, you’ve got to live just once—­got to be just downright woman for a little spell, anyway....  Come with me, kid ... my kind of life.”

Rhona looked at her terrified.  She did not understand.  What sort of woman was this?  How live in luxury without working?  How be downright woman?

“What do you mean?” asked the young girl.

So Millie told her.  They went to bed, their light was put out, and neither had a wink of sleep.  Rhona lay staring in the darkness and over the room came the soft whisper of Millie bearing a flood of the filth of the underworld.  Rhona could not resist it.  She lay helpless, quaking with a wild horror....  Later she remembered that night in Russia when she and others hid under the corn in a barn while the mob searched over their heads—­a moment ghastly with impending mutilation and death—­and she felt that this night was more terrible than that.  Her girlhood seemed torn to shreds....  Dawn broke, a watery glimmer through the high barred window.  Rhona rose from her bed, rushed to the door, pulled on the bars, and loosed a fearful shriek.  The guard, running down, Millie, leaping forward, both cried: 

“What’s the matter?”

But the slim figure in the white nightgown fell down on the floor, and thus earned a few hours in the hospital.

* * * * *

They set her to scrubbing floors next day, a work for which she had neither experience nor strength.  Weary, weary day—­the large rhythm of the scrubbing-brush, the bending of the back, the sloppy, dirty floors—­on and on, minute after minute, on through the endless hours.  She tried to work diligently, though she was dizzy and sick, and felt as if she were breaking to pieces.  Feverishly she kept on.  Lunch was tasteless to her; so was supper; and after supper came Millie.