a choc'late a-clair, why, I can do it without
nobody's leave--when I'm lucky. You ain't ever lucky in the fact'ry:
you never have nothin', see? So I'd rather be me like I am than be
me back in the fact'ry."

"And do you always expect to be--lucky?" Peter winced at the word.

"I can't afford to think about that," she replied, squinting at the
red ink in her glass. "You got to run your risks an' take your
chances. All I know is, I'll have more and see more before I die.
An' I won't die no sooner nor no painfuller than if I'd stayed on in
the fact'ry."

Peter admitted to himself that she probably wouldn't. Also, that he
had nothing to say, where Gracie was concerned. He felt helpless in
the face of it--as helpless as he had felt one June morning long ago
when he had seen old Daddy Neptune praying, after a night of horror,
to a Something or a Somebody blind and indifferent. And it seemed to
him that life pressed upon him menacingly, as if he and Neptune and
this lost child of the New York streets had been caught like rats in
a trap.

The girl, on her part, had been watching him with painful intensity.

"You're a new one on _me_," she told him frankly. "I feel like
pinchin' you to see if you're real. Say, tell me: if you're real,
are you the sort of guy that'd give twenty-five dollars, for
nothin', to a girl he picked up in the street? Or, are you just a
softy fool that a girl that picks him up in the streets can trim?
There's more of _him_ than the first sort," she finished.

"You must judge that for yourself," said Peter. "I may tell you,
though, that I am quite used to being called a fool," he finished,
tranquilly.

"So?" said she, after another long look. "Well, I--what I mean to
say is, I wish to God there was more fools like you. If there was,
there'd be less fools like me." After a pause she asked, in a
subdued voice:

"You expect to stay in this town long?"

"I leave in the morning."

"I'm sorry," said she. "Not," she added hastily, "that I want to
touch you for more money or anything like that, I don't. But
I--well, I'd like to know you was livin' in the same town, see?"

Peter saw. But again he had nothing to say. Young as he was, he knew
the absurdity of all talk of reform to such as Gracie. As things are
they can't reform, they can't even be prevented. He looked at her,
thoughtfully.

"I'm not only leaving New York, I'm leaving America to-morrow," he
said at last. "I wish there was something I c