Mary lifted her eyes suddenly, and Ella stirred awkwardly and smiled.

"I hope you are very happy, meine liebe--ja?"

"I couldn't be happier if I were in Heaven," was the quick answer.

"I'm so glad----"

Again an awkward pause.

"I was once young and pretty like you, meine liebe," she began dreamily, "--slim and straight and jolly--always laughing."

Mary held her breath in eager expectancy. Ella was going to lift the veil from the mystery of her life, stirred by memories which the coming wedding had evoked.

"And you had a thrilling romance--Ella? I always felt it."

Again silence, and then in low tones the woman told her story.

"Ja--a romance, too. I was so young and foolish--just a baby myself--not sixteen. But I was full of life and fun, and I had a way of doing what I pleased.

"The man was older than me--Oh, a lot older--with gray hairs on the side of his head. I was wild about him. I never took to kids. They didn't seem to like me----"

She paused as if hesitating to give her full confidence, and quickly went on:

"My folks were German. They couldn't speak English. I learned when I was five years old. They didn't like my lover. We quarrel day and night. I say they didn't like him because they could not speak his language. They say he was bad. I fight for him, and run away and marry him----"

Again she paused and drew a deep breath.

"Ah, I was one happy little fool that year! He make good wages on the docks--a stevedore. They had a strike, and he got to drinking. The baby came----"

She stopped suddenly.

"You had a little baby, Ella?" the girl asked in a tender whisper.

"Ja--ja," she sobbed--"so sweet, so good--so quiet--so beautiful she was.

I was very happy--like a little girl with a doll--only she laugh and cry and coo and pull my hair! He stop the drink a little while when she come, and he got work. And then he begin worse and worse. It seem like he never loved me any more after the baby. He curse me, he quarrel. He begin to strike me sometimes. I laugh and cry at first and make up and try again----"

Again she paused as if for courage to go on, and choked into silence.

"Yes--and then?" the girl asked.

"And then he come home one night wild drunk. He stumble and fall across the cradle and hurt my baby so she never cry--just lie still and tremble--her eyes wide open at first and then they droop and close and she die!

"He laugh and curse and strike me, and I fight him like a tiger. He was strong--he throw me down on the floor and gouge my eye out with his big claw----"

"Oh, my God," Mary sobbed.

Ella sprang to her feet and bent over the girl with trembling eagerness.

"You keep my secret, meine liebe?"

"Yes--yes----"

"I never tell a soul on earth what I tell you now--I just eat my heart out and keep still all the years, I can tell you--ja?"

"Yes, I'll keep it sacred--go on----"

"When I know he gouge my eye out, I go wild. I get my hand on his throat and choke him still. I drag him to the stairs and throw him head first all the way down to the bottom. He fall in a heap and lie still. I run down and drag him to the door. I kick his face and he never move. He was dead. I kick him again--and again. And then I laugh--I laugh--I laugh in his dead face--I was so glad I kill him!"

She sank in a paroxysm of sobs on the floor, and the girl touched her smooth black hair tenderly, strangled with her own emotions.

Ella rose at last and brushed the tears from her hollow cheeks.

"Now, you know, meine liebe! Why I tell you this today, I don't know--maybe I must! I dream once like you dream today----"

The girl slipped her arms around the drooping, pathetic figure and stroked it tenderly.

"The sunshine is for some, maybe," Ella went on pathetically; "for some the clouds and the storms. I hope you are very, very happy today and all the days----"

"I will be, Ella, I'm sure. I'll always love you after this."

"Maybe I make you sad because I tell you----"

"No--no! I'm glad you told me. The knowledge of your sorrow will make my life the sweeter. I shall be more humble in my joy."

It never occurred to the girl for a moment that this lonely, broken woman had torn her soul's deepest secret open in a last pathetic effort to warn her of the danger of her marriage. The wistful, helpless look in her eye meant to Mary only the anguish of memories. Each human heart persists in learning the big lessons of life at first hand. We refuse to learn any other way. The tragedies of others interest us as fiction. We make the application to others--never to ourselves.

Jim's familiar footstep echoed through the hall, and Mary sprang to the door with a cry of joy.

CHAPTER X. THE WEDDING

Ella hurried into the kitchenette and busied herself with dinner. Jim's unexpectedly early arrival broke the spell of the tragedy to which Mary had listened with breathless sympathy. Her own future she faced without a shadow of doubt or fear.

Her reproaches to Jim were entirely perfunctory, on the sin of his early call on their wedding-day.

"Naughty boy!" she cried with mock severity. "At this unseemly hour!"

He glanced about the room nervously.

"Anybody in there?"

He nodded toward the kitchenette.

"Only Ella----"

"Send her away."