The divine in this woman of the streets regenerated by the divine in her fellow-creatures, was gasping like a new-born babe for breath.  And with what anxiety they watched her!  She grew strong again, went with Sally Drover and the other girls on Sunday excursions to the country, applied herself to her embroidery with restless zeal for days, only to have it drop from her nerveless fingers.  But her thoughts were uncontrollable, she was drawn continually to the edge of that precipice which hung over the waters whence they had dragged her, never knowing when the vertigo would seize her.  And once Sally Drover, on the alert for just such an occurrence, pursued her down Dalton Street and forced her back . . .

Justice to Miss Drover cannot be done in these pages.  It was she who bore the brunt of the fierce resentment of the reincarnated fiends when the other women shrank back in fear, and said nothing to Mr. Bentley or Hodder until the incident was past.  It was terrible indeed to behold this woman revert—­almost in the twinkling of an eye—­to a vicious wretch crazed for drink, to feel that the struggle had to be fought all over again.  Unable to awe Sally Drover’s spirit, she would grow piteous.

“For God’s sake let me go—­I can’t stand it.  Let me go to hell—­that’s where I belong.  What do you bother with me for?  I’ve got a right.”

Once the doctor had to be called.  He shook his head but his eye met Miss Grower’s, and he said nothing.

“I’ll never be able to pull out, I haven’t got the strength,” she told Hodder, between sobs.  “You ought to have left me be, that was where I belonged.  I can’t stand it, I tell you.  If it wasn’t for that woman watching me downstairs, and Sally Grower, I’d have had a drink before this.  It ain’t any use, I’ve got so I can’t live without it—­I don’t want to live.”

And then remorse, self-reproach, despair,—­almost as terrible to contemplate.  She swore she would never see Mr. Bentley again, she couldn’t face him.

Yet they persisted, and gained ground.  She did see Mr. Bentley, but what he said to her, or she to him, will never be known.  She didn’t speak of it . . . .

Little by little her interest was aroused, her pride in her work stimulated.  None was more surprised than Hodder when Sally Grower informed him that the embroidery was really good; but it was thought best, for psychological reasons, to discard the old table-cover with its associations and begin a new one.  On occasional evenings she brought her sewing over to Mr. Bentley’s, while Sally read aloud to him and the young women in the library.  Miss Grower’s taste in fiction was romantic; her voice (save in the love passages, when she forgot herself ) sing-song, but new and unsuspected realms were opened up for Kate Marcy, who would drop her work and gaze wide-eyed out of the window, into the darkness.

And it was Sally who must be given credit for the great experiment, although she took Mr. Bentley and Hodder into her confidence.  On it they staked all.  The day came, at last, when the new table-cover was finished.  Miss Grower took it to the Woman’s Exchange, actually sold it, and brought back the money and handed it to her with a smile, and left her alone.