Florinda lived in a flat with fire-escapes written all over the front of
it. The street in front was being repaired. It had been said by imbecile
residents of the vicinity that the paving was never allowed to remain
down for a sufficient time to be invalided by the tramping millions, but
that it was kept perpetually stacked in little mountains through the
unceasing vigilance of a virtuous and heroic city government, which
insisted that everything should be repaired. The alderman for the
district had sometimes asked indignantly of his fellow-members why this
street had not been repaired, and they, aroused, had at once ordered it
to be repaired. Moreover, shopkeepers, whose stables were adjacent,
placed trucks and other vehicles strategically in the darkness. Into
this tangled midnight Hawker conducted Florinda. The great avenue behind
them was no more than a level stream of yellow light, and the distant
merry bells might have been boats floating down it. Grim loneliness hung
over the uncouth shapes in the street which was being repaired.

"Billie," said the girl suddenly, "what makes you so mean to me?"

A peaceful citizen emerged from behind a pile of _debris_, but he might
not have been a peaceful citizen, so the girl clung to Hawker.

"Why, I'm not mean to you, am I?"

"Yes," she answered. As they stood on the steps of the flat of
innumerable fire-escapes she slowly turned and looked up at him. Her
face was of a strange pallour in this darkness, and her eyes were as
when the moon shines in a lake of the hills.

He returned her glance. "Florinda!" he cried, as if enlightened, and
gulping suddenly at something in his throat. The girl studied the steps
and moved from side to side, as do the guilty ones in country
schoolhouses. Then she went slowly into the flat.

There was a little red lamp hanging on a pile of stones to warn people
that the street was being repaired.

CHAPTER XXV.

"I'll get my check from the Gamin on Saturday," said Grief. "They bought
that string of comics."

"Well, then, we'll arrange the present funds to last until Saturday
noon," said Wrinkles. "That gives us quite a lot. We can have a _table
d'hote_ on Friday night."

However, the cashier of the Gamin office looked under his respectable
brass wiring and said: "Very sorry, Mr.--er--Warwickson, but our pay-day
is Monday. Come around any time after ten."

"Oh, it doesn't matter," said Grief.

When he plunged into the den his