e out on rainy
evenings, when their boots got worn down, and on hot evenings, when
their linen clung to their skins. There were long periods of waiting and
endless periods of walking; there were jostlings and disputes and the
nameless, brutal caresses of the stray passer-by who was taken by them
to some miserable furnished room and came swearing down the greasy
stairs afterward.

The summer was drawing to a close, a stormy summer of burning nights.
The pair used to start out together after dinner, toward nine o'clock.
On the pavements of the Rue Notre Dame de la Lorette two long files of
women scudded along with tucked-up skirts and bent heads, keeping close
to the shops but never once glancing at the displays in the shopwindows
as they hurried busily down toward the boulevards. This was the hungry
exodus from the Quartier Breda which took place nightly when the street
lamps had just been lit. Nana and Satin used to skirt the church and
then march off along the Rue le Peletier. When they were some hundred
yards from the Cafe Riche and had fairly reached their scene of
operations they would shake out the skirts of their dresses, which up
till that moment they had been holding carefully up, and begin sweeping
the pavements, regardless of dust. With much swaying of the hips they
strolled delicately along, slackening their pace when they crossed the
bright light thrown from one of the great cafes. With shoulders thrown
back, shrill and noisy laughter and many backward glances at the men who
turned to look at them, they marched about and were completely in their
element. In the shadow of night their artificially whitened faces, their
rouged lips and their darkened eyelids became as charming and suggestive
as if the inmates of a make-believe trumpery oriental bazaar had been
sent forth into the open street. Till eleven at night they sauntered
gaily along among the rudely jostling crowds, contenting themselves with
an occasional "dirty ass!" hurled after the clumsy people whose boot
heels had torn a flounce or two from their dresses. Little familiar
salutations would pass between them and the cafe waiters, and at times
they would stop and chat in front of a small table and accept of drinks,
which they consumed with much deliberation, as became people not sorry
to sit down for a bit while waiting for the theaters to empty. But as
night advanced, if they had not made one or two trips in the direction
of the Rue la Rochefoucauld,