Her story, new to me then, was as old as man’s duplicity and woman’s inherent desire to be loved and protected. Betrayed and deserted, fearing to face her family, she stole enough of her father’s money to take her to the city and into a hospital where her baby was born. “And,” she continued, “I was glad when it died, it was a girl. When I was well enough to leave the hospital they couldn’t find my clothes. Cheap as they were, somebody had taken them. A man can go out into the street without a hat and coat, kid, but just let a woman try it, even if she has the nerve, and watch what happens to her. I had no money. The doctor gave me this dress; that is, he sold it to me and I paid for it the first time he got drunk. One of the interns traded me these shoes. He was just a dirty little beast and didn’t wait to get drunk. Then the hospital cook got me that hat and some cheap stockings and underclothes. He happened to be a white man,” she said bitterly. “I suppose I would have taken them just the same if he had been a negro or a Chinaman. After the drunken doctor I thought of nothing but suicide, anyway. But I had to have enough clothes to get through the street and down to the bridge where I could jump into the river.