Her Faithful Knight — page 69: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A Ruined Life. . 65 steps of the bridge. There I found a recess and a stone seat. I sank upon it, with my head against the coping, and I suppose I must have fainted or fallen asleep, for a blessed pause came in which I remember nothing. _ “Before I opened my eyes, I heard the wind rustling in the poplars and the river swirling under the arches below, and I listened at first without understanding. Then it seemed to me that someone was telling mea story about a poor, wretched girl who had been vain, and self-willed, and silly, and thought to make her fortune on the stage, and how she came to utter shipwreck and lay dying of starvation and a broken heart on Richmond Bridge, un- der the stars with the sound of the water and the rustling trees in her ears: “*Girls should be able to take care of themselves. Don’t tell me the fault was all on one side.’ “TI could hear their shrill women’s voices on the one side, and on the other a minority of those professional philanthropists who would want to make a lost sheep of her, and pet her and pry into her past experiences, and if only they were dark enough, desire to make a public show of her as a converted sinner. But between the two sets of women I could see no sympathy for such a girl as this, who had believed herself a wife, and had placed such faith in the solemn service of the Church that she could not see wherein she had sinned at all. “But it was all like some one else’s story. How could it affect me, Phyllis Knight, Dorothy’s sister, except that I was very sorry for the girl? “A light flashed into my eyes and brought me back to wretchedness and reality. A policeman was holding a lantern before my face and telling me I could not sleep all night upon the bridge. When he saw that I was al- most too weak to statnd, he was very kind, and took me to his wife, who made me up a bed and gave me food. and OS (E@)