e, soon dissipated, left
trembling silence like pools of sinister black water. She passed
through stagnant odours and little eddies of perfume. She lifted her
drooping head and saw a door open--the darkness was cut by a rectangle
of soft yellow light, two figures were silhouetted, then the door
closed. A gasolene torch flared above a fruit stand hard against the
towering black windowless wall of a warehouse and a woman squatted in
the shadow turning a handle. Nell pushed on past a cross street that
glittered and flared from sidewalk to cornice, and at the next corner
a single flickering gas-jet revealed a dingy vestibule with rows of
tarnished speaking tubes....

The air became thick with noise and odours and the sidewalks swayed
with people. Great Taylor slowly rounded a familiar corner, slackened
the momentum of the junk-cart, and brought up squarely against the
curb. Dragging the wheels, she gained the sidewalk and, beyond, the
rims of the cart cut into soft earth. She crossed the vacant lot. A
city's supercilious moon alone gave its half-light to the junkyard of
Grit and here the woman unloaded the cart, carrying heavy unyielding
things against her breast. She did not linger. She was trembling from
fatigue and from emotions even more novel to her. She closed the gate
without looking back at the weird crepe-like shadows that draped
themselves among the moonlit piles of twisted things. Nearing the
corner, she glanced with dull eyes at a glaring red sign: "Dancing."
Voices, laughter, and music after a kind came from the doorway, A man
was singing. Great Taylor recognized the voice but did not pause. She
was not to see the man from just around the corner again for many
years.

Hurrying, without knowing why she hurried, Nell climbed the circular
iron staircase up through parallels of odorous gloom and, entering her
flat, closed the door and quickly locked it against the world
outside--the toil, the bickering, the sneers, the insults and curses
flung from alley gates and down upon her in the traffic of the Devil's
Own city. She closed her eyes and took a long deep breath almost like
a sigh. She was home. It was good to be home, but she lacked the words
and was far too weary to express her emotions.

Lighting the gas she sank into a chair. What did it matter if the gas
was screeching? She drooped there, hands in her lap, wrists crossed,
palms turned upward and fingers curled stiffly like claws--from
holding to the jarr