one a pretense at dinner--she wandered the
streets of the old Tenderloin until midnight. An icy rain was
falling. Rains such as this--any rains except showers--were
rare in the City of the Sun. That rain by itself was enough to
make her downhearted. She walked with head down and umbrella
close to her shoulders. No one spoke to her. She returned
dripping; she had all but ruined her one dress. She went to
bed, but not to sleep. About nine--early for that house she
rose, drank a cup of coffee and ate part of a roll. Her little
stove and such other things as could not be taken along she
rolled into a bundle, marked it, "For Ida." On a scrap of
paper she wrote this note:

Don't think I'm ungrateful, please. I'm going without saying
good-by because I'm afraid if I saw you, you'd be generous
enough to put up for me, and I'd be weak enough to accept. And
if I did that, I'd never be able to get strong or even to hold
my head up. So--good-by. I'll learn sooner or later--learn
how to live. I hope it won't be too long--and that the teacher
won't be too hard on me.

Yes, I'll learn, and I'll buy fine hats at your grand millinery
store yet. Don't forget me altogether.

She tucked this note into the bundle and laid it against the
door behind which Ida and one of her regulars were sleeping
peacefully. The odor of Ida's powerful perfume came through
the cracks in the door; Susan drew it eagerly into her
nostrils, sobbed softly, turned away, It was one of the
perfumes classed as immoral; to Susan it was the aroma of a
friendship as noble, as disinterested, as generous, as human
sympathy had ever breathed upon human woe. With her few
personal possessions in a package she descended the stairs
unnoticed, went out into the rain. At the corner of Sixth
Avenue she paused, looked up and down the street. It was
almost deserted. Now and then a streetwalker, roused early by
a lover with perhaps a family waiting for him, hurried by,
looking piteous in the daylight which showed up false and dyed
hair, the layers of paint, the sad tawdriness of battered
finery from the cheapest bargain troughs.

Susan went slowly up Sixth Avenue. Two blocks, and she saw a
girl enter the side door of a saloon across the way. She
crossed the street, pushed in at the same door, went on to a
small sitting-room with blinds drawn, with round tables, on
every table a match stand. It was one of those places where
streetwalkers rest their