uxurious chaise longue and a small French dressing table.
Very cheerful, very empty. "It looks," she decided, "just like the bed
feels. I'm the first fellow who has been here.

"No," she corrected herself in a moment, "that's very ignorant of you,
my dear. This is a New York apartment, you know. All kinds of other
fellows have been in this room ahead of me; and they've lain awake by
the hour here, planning how to get married or divorced, or getting ready
to write a great book or make a million dollars, or sing in grand opera
or murder their child. All the things in the newspapers have been
arranged in this spot where I lie! Now I'll turn out the light," she
added, "and sink quietly to rest!"

But in the dark she lay listening to the strange low hub-hub from
outside. And it made her think of what she had seen an hour before,
when at the open window, resting her elbows on the sill, she had begun
to make her acquaintance with her backyard--a yawning abyss of brick and
cement which went down and down to cement below, and up and up to a
strip of blue sky, and to right and to left went stretching away with
rows and rows of windows. And now as the murmurs and quick low cries,
piano music, a baritone voice and a sudden burst of laughter, came to
her ears, she gravely named her neighbours:

"Wives and husbands, divorcees, secret lovers, grafters, burglars,
suffragettes, actresses and anarchists and millionaires and poor young
things--all spending a quiet evening at home. And that's so sensible in
you all. You'll need your strength for tomorrow."

From the city far and near came numberless other voices. From street
cars, motors and the L, from boats far off on the river this calm and
still October night, from Broadway and from Harlem and the many teeming
slums, came the vast murmuring voice of the town. And she thought:

"I'm becoming a part of all this!" She listened a little and added, "It
breathes, like something quite alive." She smiled and added approvingly,
"Quite right, my dear, just breathe right on. But don't go and breathe
as though you were sleeping. Keep me company tonight."

Suddenly she remembered how in their taxi from the train, as they had
sped up Park Avenue all agleam with its cold blue lights and she had
chattered gaily of anything that came into her head, twice she had
caught in her sister's eyes that glimmer of expectancy. "Amy feels sure
I will be a success!" Ethel thrilled at the recollection, and tho