“People-ish!  They love to stick pins in other people!  It’s tyranny—­the fear of what people will think about us, say about us, do about us!  I’m going to give myself a present when I get like Mr. Guard and can tell some people to go—­go anywhere they please, if it’s where I won’t meet them.  Are you all right now and ready for your nap?”

Mrs. Mundy nodded, looked at me with something of anxiety in her eyes as I straightened the counterpane of her spotless bed; but she said nothing more, and, lowering the shades at the windows lest the sunlight bother her, I went out of the room and left her to go asleep.

I am glad of the much work of these past few days.  It has kept me from thinking too greatly of what Selwyn told me of Harrie, of the girl to whom he is engaged, and of the little cashier-girl whose terror-filled face is ever with me.  It has kept me, also, from dwelling too constantly on the message Lillie Pierce sent by me to the women of clean and happy worlds.  For herself there was no plea for pity or for pardon, no effort at palliation or excuse.  But with strength born of bitter knowledge she begged, demanded, that I do something to make good women understand that worlds like hers will never pass away if men alone are left to rid earth of them.  Ceaselessly I keep busy lest I realize too clearly what such a message means.  I shrink from it, appalled at what it may imply.  I am a coward.  As great a coward as the women whose unconcern I have of late been so condemning.

Yesterday Lillie went away.  Mr. Guard took her to the mountains where a woman he used to know in the days of his mission work will take care of her.  He is coming back to-morrow.  The sense of comfort that his coming means is beyond analysis or definition.  Only once or twice in a lifetime does one meet a man of David Guard’s sort, and whatever my mistakes, whatever my impulses and lack of judgment may lead me to do, he will never be impatient with me.  We have had several long and frank and friendly talks since the day he brought Lillie in to Mrs. Mundy, and if Scarborough Square did no more for me than to give me his friendship I should be forever in its debt.

Early this morning I had a dream I have been trying all day to forget.  Through the first part of the night sleep had been impossible.  The haunting memory of Lillie’s eyes could not be shut out, and the sound of her voice made the stillness of the room unendurable.  I tried to read, to write, to do anything but think.  I fought, resisted; refused to face what I did not want to see, to listen to what I did not want to hear; and not until the dawn of a new day did I fall asleep.

In my dream Lillie was in front of me, the bit of wall-flower in her hands, and gaspingly she cried out that something should be done.

“It can never be made clean, the world we women live in.  But there should never be such worlds.  Good women pretend they do not know.  They do not want to know!”