ern
wastes. I looked in some disappointment at the closed doors and turned
away.

I meant to go home, and I had proceeded about three paces when the lock
clicked. I stopped. The front door opened cautiously, and the gray
head of Jim's negro butler appeared. Behind it was the famous grille
of cast-steel, capable, according to rumour, of defying the axes of any
number of raiding reformers.

Then emerged one of the most beautiful women that I had ever seen.

I should have called her a girl, for she could not have been more than
twenty years of age. Her hair was of a fair brown, the features
modelled splendidly, the head poised upon a flawless throat that
gleamed white beneath a neckpiece of magnificent sable.

She carried a sable muff, too, and under these furs was a dress of
unstylish fashion and cut that contrasted curiously with them. I
thought that those loose sleeves had passed away before the nineteenth
century died. In one hand she carried a bag, into which she was
stuffing a large roll of bills.

As she stepped down to the street the dog leaped up at her. A hand
fell caressingly upon the creature's head, and I knew that she had one
servant who would be faithful unto death.

She passed so close to me that her dress brushed my overcoat, and for
an instant her eyes met mine. There was a look in them that startled
me--terror and helplessness, as though she had suffered some benumbing
shock which made her actions more automatic than conscious.

This was no woman of the class that one might expect to find in Daly's.
There was innocence in the face and in the throat, uplifted, as one
sees it in young girls.

I was bewildered. What was a girl like that doing in Daly's at half
past twelve in the morning?

She began walking slowly and rather aimlessly, it seemed to me, along
the street in the direction of Sixth Avenue. My curiosity was
unbounded. I followed her at a decent interval to see what she was
going to do. But she did not seem to know.

The girl looked as if she had stepped out of a cloister into an unknown
world, and the dog added to the strangeness of the picture.

The street loafers stared after her, and two men began walking abreast
of her on the other side of the road. I followed more closely.

As she stood upon the curb on the east side of Sixth Avenue I saw her
glance timidly up and down before venturing to cross. There was little
traffic, and the cars were running at wide interva