k-broker in a bad financial plight, scarcely
noticed that a female figure was passing him. Had the morrow's market
been less a matter of life and death to him he might have thrown her
a glance; but as it was she did not come within the range of his
consciousness. To her amazement, and even to her consternation, Letty
saw him go onward up the hill, his eyes straight before him, and his
profile sharply cut in the electric light.

She explained the situation by the fact that he hadn't seen her at
all. That a man could actually _see_ a girl, in such unusual
conditions, and still go by inoffensively, was as contrary to all she
had heard of life as it would have been to the principles of a Turkish
woman to suppose that one of this sex could behold her face and not
fall fiercely in love with her. As, however, two men were now coming
up the hill together Letty was obliged to re-organize her forces to
meet the new advance.

She couldn't reason this time that they hadn't seen her, because their
heads turned in her direction, and the intonation of the words she
couldn't articulately hear was that of faint surprise. Further than
that there was no incident. They were young men too, also in evening
dress, and of the very type of which all her warnings had bidden her
beware. The immunity from insult was almost a matter for chagrin.

As she approached Fifty-ninth Street encounters were nearly as
numerous as they would have been in daylight; but Letty went on her
way as if, instead of the old gray rag, she wore the magic cloak of
invisibility. So it was during the whole of the long half mile between
Fifty-ninth Street and Forty-second Street. In spite of the fact that
she was the only unescorted woman she saw, no invitation "to go to the
bad" was proffered her. "There's quite a trick to it," Steptoe had
said, in the afternoon; and she began to think that there was.

At Forty-second Street, for no reason that she could explain, she
turned into the lower and quieter spur of Madison Avenue, climbing and
descending Murray Hill. Here she was almost alone. Motor-car traffic
had practically ceased; foot-passengers there were none; on each side
of the street the houses were somber and somnolent. The electric lamps
flared as elsewhere, but with little to light up.

Her sense of being lost became awesome. It began to urge itself in on
her that she was going nowhere, and had nowhere to go. She was back in
the days when she had walked away fro