I had made up my mind to go with her.

"Very well," I said aloud; "shut up your trunk and put something round
you, and we'll go now."

"You will see Nanine? You will speak to her? Let me call her," said
Suzee rather anxiously. And as I assented she slipped out of the room
and reappeared with a fat, coarse-looking woman who grinned amiably as
she saw me. She agreed to let Suzee go with me then and there for
another hundred dollars, and said her little trunk should be sent
downstairs and put on a cab which the guide could get for us.

While this was being done, she chatted to me, thanked me for the money
I had cabled over, and hoped I was satisfied with Suzee, her
appearance, and the treatment she had received. I said I was, and
asked how it was the girl had come to her at all. She seemed a little
confused at that, and began to explain volubly that she had had
nothing to do with it. Suzee had come there one night and begged to be
taken in, and as she had known some of the girl's people who had
formerly lived in Chinatown, she had done so out of pure pity and
charity and love of humanity.

I listened to all this with a smile, and, as I felt I was not getting
the truth, did not prolong the conversation. When the guide came back
and said he was ready for us I paid the one hundred dollars and wished
her good-night.

She opened the outer door of the room for us, and we went down a
staircase this time which eventually led us to a door in another yard
from which we gained the street. The ladder way, I take it, was used
chiefly as a convenient exit in case of a raid by the police. I put
Suzee into the cab and jumped in myself, the guide went on the box,
and we drove back to the hotel.

It needed a certain amount of moral courage to drive up to the hotel
with the scarlet-clad Suzee beside me, but I think possibly artists
have a larger share of that useful quality than other men. Always
having been different from others since his childhood, the artist is
accustomed to the gaping wonder, the ridicule as well as the
admiration, the misunderstanding, of those about him, and it ceases to
affect him; while viewing as he does his companions with a certain
contempt, knowing them to be less gifted than himself, he sets no
store by their opinion.

So I paid and dismissed my guide, also the driver, pushed open the
swinging glass doors, and entered the lounge, Suzee beside me.

We were not late enough; in another hour the hall would