admittance on the
pretext that they were "full up" did she realize that a young woman
alone is an object of suspicion in New York. When a fourth room-clerk
expressed his polite regrets she looked him straight in the eye and
said:

"I understand. But I can't sleep in the street. You must tell me
where I can go."

"Well, there's the Ripon over in Seventh Avenue," said he.

"Is it respectable?" said she.

"Oh, it's very clean and comfortable there," said he. "They'll treat
you right."

"Is it respectable?" said she.

"Well, now, it doesn't LOOK queer, if that's what you mean," replied
he. "You'll do very nicely there. You can be just as quiet as you
want."

She saw that hotel New York would not believe her respectable. So to
the Ripon she went, and was admitted without discussion. As the last
respectable clerk had said, it did not LOOK queer. But it FELT queer;
she resolved that she would go into a boarding-house the very next day.

Here again what seemed simple proved difficult. No respectable
boarding-house would have Miss Mary Stevens. She was confident that
nothing in her dress or manner hinted mystery. Yet those sharp-eyed
landladies seemed to know at once that there was something peculiar
about her. Most of them became rude the instant they set eyes upon
her. A few--of the obviously less prosperous class--talked with her,
seemed to be listening for something which her failing to say decided
them upon all but ordering her out of the house. She, hindered by her
innocence, was slow in realizing that she could not hope for admission
to any select respectable circle, even of high-class salesladies and
clerks, unless she gave a free and clear account of herself--whence she
had come, what she was doing, how she got her money.

Toward the end of the second day's wearisome and humiliating search she
found a house that would admit her. It was a pretentious,
well-furnished big house in Madison Avenue. The price--thirty-five
dollars a week for board, a bedroom with a folding bed in an alcove,
and a bath, was more than double what she had counted on paying, but
she discovered that decent and clean lodgings and food fit to eat were
not to be had for less. "And I simply can't live pig-fashion," said
she. "I'd be so depressed that I could do nothing. I can't live like
a wild animal, and I won't." She had some vague
notion--foreboding--that this was not the proper spirit with which to
face life. "I