ected as
though in glass. The night and the absence of thickly crawling motors
and swarming crowds gave it dignity. A strange, incongruous Oriental
note was struck by the deep red of velvet hangings thrown up by the
lights in a furniture dealer's shop on the second floor of a white
building.

"Look for a row of women's ugly wooden heads painted by some one
suffering from delirium tremens," said Miss Susie Capper as they turned
down West Forty-sixth Street. "It's a dressmaker's, although you might
think it was an asylum for dope fiends. I've got a bedroom, sitter and
bath on the top floor. The house is a rabbit warren of bedrooms,
sitters and baths, and in every one of them there's some poor devil
trying to squeeze a little kindness out of fate. That wretched taxi
driver! He may have a wife waiting for him. Do you think that
red-haired feller's got to the hospital yet? He had a nice cut on his
own silly face--and serve him right! I hope it'll teach him that he
hasn't bought the blooming world--but of course it won't. He's the sort
that never gets taught anything, worse luck! Nobody spanked him when he
was young and soft. Come on up, and you shall taste my scrambled eggs.
I'll show you what a forgiving little soul I am."

She laughed, ran her eyes quickly over Martin, and opened the door with
a latchkey. Half a dozen small letter boxes were fastened to the wall,
with cards in their slots.

"Who the devil cares?" said Martin to himself, and he followed the girl
up the narrow, ill-lighted staircase covered with shabby carpet. Two or
three inches of white stockings gleamed above the drab uppers of her
high-heeled boots. Outside the open door of a room on the first floor
there was a line of milk bottles, and Martin sighted a man in shirt
sleeves, cooking sausages on a small gas jet in a cubby-hole. He looked
up, and a cheery smile broke out on his clean-shaven face. There was
brown grease paint on his collar. "Hello, Tootles," he called out.

"Hello, Laddy," she said. "How'd it go to-night?"

"Fine. Best second night in the history of the theater. Come in and
have a bite."

"Can't. Got company."

And up they went, the aroma following.

A young woman in a sky-blue peignoir scuttled across the next landing,
carrying a bottle of beer in each hand. There was a smell of onions and
hot cheese. "What ho, Tootles," she said.

"What ho, Irene. Is it true they've put your notice up?"

"Yep, the dirty dogs! Twelve weeks' re