The impartial historian scarcely knows how to distribute his pathos.  By the electric light (and that is the modern light) gayety is almost as pathetic as suffering.  Before the Montana girl hit upon the happy device that gave her notoriety, her feet, whose every twinkle now was worth a gold eagle, had trod a thorny path.  There was a fortune now in the whirl of her illusory robes, but any day—­such are the whims of fashion—­she might be wandering again, sick at heart, about the great city, knocking at the side doors of variety shows for any engagement that would give her a pittance of a few dollars a week.  How long had Carmen waited on the social outskirts; and now she had come into her kingdom, was she anything but a tinsel queen?  Even Henderson, the great Henderson, did the friends of his youth respect him? had he public esteem?  Carmen used to cut out the newspaper paragraphs that extolled Henderson’s domestic virtue and his generosity to his family, and show them to her lord, with a queer smile on her face.  Miss Tavish, in the nervous consciousness of fleeting years, was she not still waiting, dashing here and there like a bird in a net for the sort of freedom, audacious as she was, that seemed denied her?  She was still beautiful, everybody said, and she was sought and flattered, because she was always merry and good-natured.  Why should Van Dam, speaking of women, say that there were horses that had been set up, and checked up and trained, that held their heads in an aristocratic fashion, moved elegantly, and showed style, long after the spirit had gone out of them?  And Jack himself, happily married, with a comfortable income, why was life getting flat to him?  What sort of career was it that needed the aid of Carmen and the serpentine dancer?  And why not, since it is absolutely necessary that the world should be amused?

We are in no other world when we enter the mean tenement in the alley off Rivington Street.  Here also is the life of the town.  The room is small, but it contains a cook-stove, a chest of drawers, a small table, a couple of chairs, and two narrow beds.  On the top of the chest are a looking-glass, some toilet articles, and bottles of medicine.  The cracked walls are bare and not clean.  In one of the beds are two children, sleeping soundly, and on the foot of it is a middle-aged woman, in a soiled woolen gown with a thin figured shawl drawn about her shoulders, a dirty cap half concealing her frowzy hair; she looks tired and worn and sleepy.  On the other bed lies a girl of twenty years, a woman in experience.  The kerosene lamp on the stand at the head of the bed casts a spectral light on her flushed face, and the thin arms that are restlessly thrown outside the cover.  By the bedside sits the doctor, patient, silent, and watchful.  The doctor puts her hand caressingly on that of the girl.  It is hot and dry.  The girl opens her eyes with a startled look, and says, feebly: 

“Do you think he will come?”