he
carpet-covered, lengthwise seat, her red hands, with the cut forefinger
bound in rag, folded over her waist.

At Fiftieth Street she alighted, the white lights of the whitest street in
the world forcing down through the murk, and a theater crowd swarming to be
turned from reality.

The incandescent sign of the Hotel Liberty jutted out ahead.

She did not pause. She was in and into an elevator even before a lackey
turned to stare.

She found "Ninety-six" easily enough, inserting the key and opening the
door upon darkness--a warm darkness that came flowing out scented. She
found the switch, pressed it.

A lamp with a red shade sprang up and a center chandelier. A warm-toned,
well-tufted room, hotel chromos well in evidence, but a turkey-red air of
solid comfort.

Beyond, a white-tiled bathroom shining through the open door, and another
room hinted at beyond that.

She dropped, even in her hat and jacket, against the divan piled with
fat-looking satin cushions. Tears coursed out from her closed eyes, and she
relaxed as if she would swoon to the luxury of the pillows, burrowing and
letting them bulge up softly about her.

A half-hour she lay so in the warm bath of light, her little body so
quickly fallen into vagrancy not without litheness beneath the moldy skirt.

* * * * *

Some time after eight she rose, letting the warm water in the bathroom lave
over her hands, limbering them, and from a bottle of eau de Cologne in a
small medicine-chest sprinkled herself freely and touched up the corners of
her eyes with it. A thick robe of Turkish toweling hung from the bathroom
door. She unhooked it, looping it over one arm.

A key scraped in the lock. From where she stood a rigidity raced over Ann
'Lisbeth, locking her every limb in paralysis. Her mouth moved to open and
would not.

The handle turned, and, with a sudden release of faculties, darting this
way and that, as if at bay, she tore the white-enameled medicine-chest from
its moorings, and, with a yell sprung somewhere from the primordial depths
of her, stood with it swung to hurl.

The door opened and she lunged, then let it fall weakly and with a small
crash.

The chambermaid, white with shock at that cry, dropped her burden of towels
in the open doorway and fled. Ann 'Lisbeth fled, too, down the two flights
of stairs her frenzy found out for her, and across the flare of Broadway.

The fog from East River was blowing in