drew. The young man struck a match and held
it for her to light the cigarette she took from her purse.
Then he lit one himself. "Next time try one of mine," said he.
"I get 'em of a fellow that makes for the swellest uptown
houses. But I get 'em ten cents a package instead of forty.
I haven't seen you down here before. What a good skin you've
got! It's been a long time since I've seen a skin as fine as
that, except on a baby now and then. And that shape of yours
is all right, too. I suppose it's the real goods?"

With that he leaned across the table and put his hand upon her
bosom. She drew back indifferently.

"You don't give anything for nothing--eh?" laughed he. "Been
in the business long?"

"It seems long."

"It ain't what it used to be. The competition's getting to be
something fierce. Looks as if all the respectable girls and
most of the married women were coming out to look for a little
extra money. Well--why not?"

Susan shrugged her shoulders. "Why not?" echoed she carelessly.

She did not look forward with pleasure to being alone. The man
was clean and well dressed, and had an unusual amount of
personal charm that softened his impertinence of manner.
Evidently he has the habit of success with women. She much
preferred him sitting with her to her own depressing society.
So she accepted his invitation. She took one of his
cigarettes, and it was as good as he had said. He rattled on,
mingling frank coarse compliments with talk about "the
business" from a standpoint so practical that she began to
suspect he was somehow in it himself. He clearly belonged to
those more intelligent children of the upper class tenement
people, the children who are too bright and too well educated
to become working men and working women like their parents; they
refuse to do any kind of manual labor, as it could never in the
most favorable circumstances pay well enough to give them the
higher comforts they crave, the expensive comforts which every
merchant is insistently and temptingly thrusting at a public
for the most part too poor to buy; so these cleverer children
of the working class develop into shyster lawyers, politicians,
sports, prostitutes, unless chance throws into their way some
respectable means of getting money. Vaguely she
wondered--without caring to question or guess what particular
form of activity this young man had taken in avoiding
monotonous work at small pay.

After her second drink