ie--warned her every few days that
she was skating on the thinnest of ice. But she went her way.
Not until she accompanied a girl to an opium joint to discover
whether dope had the merits claimed for it as a deadener of
pain and a producer of happiness--not until then did Freddie
come in person.

"I hear," said he and she wondered whether he had heard from
Max or from loose-tongued Maud--"that you come into the hotel
so drunk that men sometimes leave you right away again--go
without paying you."

"I must drink," said Susan.

"You must _stop_ drink," retorted he, amiable in his terrible
way. "If you don't, I'll have you pinched and sent up.
That'll bring you to your senses."

"I must drink," said Susan.

"Then I must have you pinched," said he with his mocking laugh.
"Don't be a fool," he went on. "You can make money enough to
soon buy the right sort of clothes so that I can afford to be
seen with you. I'd like to take you out once in a while and
give you a swell time. But what'd we look like together--with
you in those cheap things out of bargain troughs? Not that you
don't look well--for you do. But the rest of you isn't up to
your feet and to the look in your face. The whole thing's got to
be right before a lady can sit opposite _me_ in Murray's or Rector's."

"All I ask is to be let alone," said Susan.

"That isn't playing square--and you've got to play square. What
I want is to set you up in a nice parlor trade--chaps from the
college and the swell clubs and hotels. But I can't do
anything for you as long as you drink this way. You'll have to
stay on the streets."

"That's where I want to stay."

"Well, there's something to be said for the streets," Freddie
admitted. "If a woman don't intend to make sporting her life
business, she don't want to get up among the swells of the
profession, where she'd become known and find it hard to
sidestep. Still, even in the street you ought to make a
hundred, easy--and not go with any man that doesn't suit you."

"Any man that doesn't suit me," said Susan. And, after a
pause, she said it again: "Any man that doesn't suit me."

The young man, with his shrewdness of the street-graduate and
his sensitiveness of the Italian, gave her an understanding
glance. "You look as if you couldn't decide whether to laugh
or cry. I'd try to laugh if I was you."

She had laughed as he spoke.

Freddie nodded approval. "That sounded good to me. You're
getting