--on'y you don't seem that
sort. Haven't you got as much as two bits? It wouldn't come to that if
you took the subway over here at----"

"Well, I haven't got two bits; nor one bit; nor nothin' at all; so I
guess I'll be lightin' out."

She had nodded and passed, when a stride of his long legs brought him
up to her again. "Well, see here, sister! If you haven't got two bits,
take this. I can't have you trampin' all the way over to Red
Point--not _you_!"

Before knowing what had happened Letty found her hand closing over a
silver half-dollar, while her benefactor, as if ashamed of his act,
was off again on his beat. She ran after him. Her excitement was such
that she forgot the secondary language.

"Oh, I couldn't accept this from you. Please! Don't make me take it.
I'm--" She felt it the moment for making the confession, and possibly
getting hints--"I'm--I'm goin' to the bad, anyhow."

"Oh, so that's the talk! I thought you said you'd gone to the bad
already. Oh, no, sister; you don't put that over on me, not a nice
looker like you!"

She was almost sobbing. "Well, I'm going--if--if I can find the way. I
wish you'd tell me if there's a trick to it."

"There's one trick I'll tell you, and that's the way to Red Point."

"I know that already."

"Then, if you know that already, you've got my four bits, which is
more than enough to take you there decent." He lifted his hand, with a
warning forefinger. "Remember now, little sister, as long as you spend
that half dollar it'll bind you to keep good."

He tramped off into the darkness, leaving Letty perplexed at the ways
of wickedness, as she began once more to drift southward.

But she drifted southward with a new sense of misgiving. Danger was
mysteriously coy, and she didn't know how to court it. True, there was
still time enough, but the debut was not encouraging. When she had
gone forth from Judson Flack's she had felt sure that adventure lay in
wait for her, and Rashleigh Allerton had responded almost
instantaneously. Now she had no such confidence. On the contrary; all
her premonitions worked the other way. Perhaps it was the old gray
rag. Perhaps it was her lack of feminine appeal. Men had never flocked
about her as they flocked about some girls, like bees about flowers.
If she was a flower, she was a dust flower, a humble thing, at home in
the humblest places, and never regarded as other than a weed.

She wandered into Fourth Avenue, reaching Astor Place.