ghtgown from a deep drawer marked: "Nightgowns
and petticoats--Women's." She assured Miss Toland that she could buy a
toothbrush the next day, and when the older woman asked her how she
liked her bath in the morning, Julia said very staidly: "Warm, thank
you."

"Warm? Well, so do I," said Miss Toland's approving voice from the next
room. "This business of ice-cold baths! Fad. There's a gas heater in the
kitchen."

Julia, laying her underwear neatly over a chair, was struck by the
enormity of the task she had undertaken. A great blight of utter
discouragement swept over her--she never could do it! Her mother--all
her kin--seemed to take shadowy shape to menace this little haven she
had found. Chester--suppose he should find her! Suppose Mark should!
Sooner or later some one must discover where she was.

And clothes! These clothes would not do! She had no money; she must
borrow. And how was she to help in sewing classes and cooking classes,
knowing only what she knew?

".... said to her as nicely as I could, but firmly," Miss Toland was
saying, above the rasp of a running faucet in the bathroom, '"Well, my
dear Miss Hewitt, you may be a trained worker and I'm not, but you can't
expect your theories to work under conditions--'"

"What a bluffer I am," thought Julia, getting into bed. She snapped her
light off, but Miss Toland turned it on again when she came to the door
to look at Julia with great satisfaction.

"Comfortable, my dear?"

"Oh, yes, thank you."

"Have you forgotten to open your window?"

Julia raised herself on an elbow.

"Well, I believe I have," said she.

Miss Toland flung it up.

"We're as safe as a church here," she said, after a moment's study of
the street. "Sometimes the Italians opposite get noisy, but they're
harmless. Well, I'm going to read--you'll see my light. Sleep tight!"

"Thank you," said Julia.

Miss Toland went back to her room, and Julia, wide awake, lay staring at
her own room's pure bare walls, the triangle of light that fell in the
little passageway from Miss Toland's reading lamp, and the lights in the
street outside. Now and then a passing car sent lights wheeling across
her ceiling like the flanges of a fan; now and then a couple of men
passing just under her window roused her with their deep voices, or a
tired child's voice rose up above the patter of footsteps like a bird's
pipe in the night. Cats squalled and snarled, and fled up the street; a
soprano voice flo