Somewhere on the East Side, beyond Gramercy Park and Irving Place, with
their beautiful old houses; beyond Stuyvesant Square, once equally
famous for the princely hospitality of its residents; still further on
in that section which lies toward the river, where the women and
children as well as the men toil unceasingly for the bare necessities of
life, where evidences of poverty and suffering are all about, and which
is commonly termed "the slums"; somewhere there, we say, in one of the
smaller tenement buildings, some months later, Miriam Challoner, one
time wealthy and fashionable woman of society, took refuge.
Within this new-found home--a nest consisting of two rooms--everything
was scrupulously neat; but except for a small gilt chair that caught the
rays of the sunlight, and that seemed fully as incongruous to its
surroundings as was the woman herself, there was nothing in its
furnishings to remind one of former prosperity. In a far corner of the
adjoining room was a stove on which a frugal meal was cooking, sending
its odour throughout the small apartment--a meal that in former days she
would not have thought possible even for her servants. At the window of
this room,--which was bedroom and living-room combined,--upon a small
table was a typewriter, before which sat Miriam Challoner, clad in a
sombre dress that was almost nun-like in its severity. She was pale, and
on her face was the look of a woman acquainted with grief.