Belle, because of her thorough liking and respect for Mr. Wentworth, and even more for the reason that he had obtained her promise to come, was rarely absent from her class, and the hour spent at the chapel undoubtedly had a good and restraining influence; but over and against this one or two hours in seven days were pitted the moral atmosphere of the shop, the bold admiration and advances in the streets, which were no longer unheeded and were scarcely resented, and the demoralizing sights and sounds of a tenement-house.  The odds were too great for poor Belle.  Like thousands of other girls, she stood in peculiar need of sheltered home life, and charity broad as heaven should be exercised toward those exposed as she was.

As Mr. Jocelyn sank deeper in degradation, Mildred’s morbid impulse to shrink, cower, and hide, in such poor shelter as she had, grew stronger, and at last she did little more than try to sleep through the long, dreary Sabbaths, that she might have strength for the almost hopeless struggle of the week.  She was unconsciously drifting into a hard, apathetic materialism, in which it was her chief effort not to think or remember—­from the future she recoiled in terror—­but simply to try to maintain her physical power to meet the daily strain.

It is a sad and terrible characteristic of our Christian city, that girls, young, beautiful, and unprotected like Mildred and Belle, are the natural prey of remorseless huntsmen.  Only a resolute integrity, great prudence and care, can shield them; and these not from temptation and evil pursuit, but only from the fall which such snares too often compass.

Of these truths Mildred had a terrible proof.  A purer-hearted girl than she never entered the maelstrom of city life; but those who looked upon her lovely face looked again, and lingeringly, and there was one who had devoured her beauty daily with wolfish eyes.  In charge of the department of the shop wherein she toiled, there was a man who had long since parted with the faintest trace of principle or conscience.  He was plausible, fine-looking, after a certain half-feminine type, and apparently vigilant and faithful in his duties as a floor-walker; but his spotless linen concealed a heart that plotted all the evil his hands dared to commit.  For him Mildred had possessed great attractions from the first; and, with the confidence bestowed by his power, and many questionable successes, he made his first advances so openly that he received more than one public and stinging rebuff.  A desire for revenge, therefore, had taken entire possession of him, and with a serpent’s cold, deadly patience he was waiting for a chance to uncoil and strike.  Notwithstanding his outward civility, Mildred never met the expression of his eyes without a shudder.

From frank-tongued Belle, Roger had obtained some hints of this man’s earlier attentions, and of his present ill-concealed dislike—­a latent hostility which gave Mildred no little uneasiness, since, by some pretext, he might cause her dismissal.  She knew too well that they were in such straits now that they could not afford one hour’s idleness.  Roger therefore nursed a bitter antipathy against the fellow.