Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/233

 into it the best work of which she was capable. The wild scenes of the night were like a horrible dream in their effect on the quiet little woman who had gone to them still full of memories of convent gardens, and dimly lighted chapels where black-robed nuns prayed silently. She described them vividly and strongly, setting them down as she had seen them, not wholly understanding what she wrote, but giving to the public a story whose realism haunted many a man and woman who read it the next day. It was the report of innocence on vice, made with the fidelity with which a little child tells of some horror that it does not comprehend, and for that very reason describes the more effectively. Miss Van Dyke finished her story as dawn was breaking. Then she went alone through the gray streets, past dimly burning lamps, to the elevated train which carried her to a station near her up town boarding-house. There had been no arrangement made by the office for her safe conduct on this occasion. It had been taken for granted that a young woman who had done an election night special, describing the