ance of a
big, red-sandstone building, and standing between the show-windows, took
off my hat, laid it on the pavement, and proceeded to unroll my hair and
slick it up once more with the aid of the side-comb, of which I had now
only one left, having lost the other somewhere in my flight from
Henrietta's. That I should have thought to put on my hat in preparing
for that flight I do not understand, for I forgot my gloves, a
brand-new pair too; my handkerchief; and, most needful of all else, my
ribbon stock-collar, without which my neck rose horribly long and thin
above my dusty jacket-collar. Looking at it ruefully, I began to feel
for the first time what was for me at least the very quintessence of
poverty--the absolute impossibility of personal cleanliness and of
decent raiment. I had known hunger and loneliness since I had come to
New York, but never before had I experienced this new, this infinitely
greater terror--lack of self-respect. That I had done nothing to lower
my self-respect had nothing whatever to do with it, since self-respect
is often more a matter of material things than of moral values. It is
possible for a hungry woman to walk with pride, and it is possible for
the immoral and utterly degraded woman to hold her own with the best of
her sisters, when it comes to visible manifestation of self-respect, if
only she is able to maintain her usual degree of cleanliness and good
grooming. But unacquainted with soap for two days! and without a collar!
How could I ever summon courage to present myself to anybody in such a
condition? Had I been an old woman, I mightn't have cared. But I was a
girl; and, being a girl, I suffered all of a girl's heartache and
melancholy wretchedness when I remembered that it was Sunday and that
there was no hope of buying either collar or comb for twenty-four
hours--if, indeed, I dared to spend any of my few remaining dimes and
nickels for these necessities, which had suddenly soared to the heights
of unattainable luxuries.

In the full consciousness of my disreputable appearance, I hung in the
doorway, reluctant to fare forth in the cruel light of the thoroughfare.
Hitherto I had had the street all to myself, so it had not mattered so
much how I looked. But now an empty car hurtled by, its gong breaking
for the first time the silence of the long vista stretching away and
dipping southward to the Battery. Then another car came speeding along
from the opposite direction, whirled pas