of the apparent nearness of her former abode. Her life
again lay in the same streets; but there again came the sense
of strangeness which only one who has lived in New York could
appreciate. The streets were the same; but to her they seemed
as the streets of another city, because she was now seeing in
them none of the things she used to see, was seeing instead
kinds of people, aspects of human beings, modes of feeling and
acting and existing of which she used to have not the faintest
knowledge. There were as many worlds as kinds of people.
Thus, though we all talk to each other as if about the same
world, each of us is thinking of his own kind of world, the
only one he sees. And that is why there can never be sympathy
and understanding among the children of men until there is some
approach to resemblance in their various lots; for the lot
determines the man.

The house was filled with women of her own kind. They were
allowed all privileges. There was neither bath nor stationary
washstand, but the landlady supplied tin tubs on request. "Oh,
Mr. Palmer's recommendation," said she; "I'll give you two days
to pay. My terms are in advance. But Mr. Palmer's a dear
friend of mine."

She was a short woman with a monstrous bust and almost no hips.
Her thin hair was dyed and frizzled, and her voice sounded as
if it found its way out of her fat lips after a long struggle
to pass through the fat of her throat and chest. Her second
chin lay upon her bosom in a soft swollen bag that seemed to be
suspended from her ears. Her eyes were hard and evil, of a
brownish gray. She affected suavity and elaborate politeness;
but if the least thing disturbed her, she became red and coarse
of voice and vile of language. The vile language and the
nature of her business and her private life aside, she would
have compared favorably with anyone in the class of those who
deal--as merchants, as landlords, as boarding-house
keepers--with the desperately different classes of uncertain
income. She was reputed rich. They said she stayed on in
business to avoid lonesomeness and to keep in touch with all
that was going on in the life that had been hers from girlhood.

"And she's a mixer," said Maud to Susan. In response to
Susan's look of inquiry, she went on to explain, "A mixer's a
white woman that keeps a colored man." Maud laughed at Susan's
expression of horror. "You are a greenie," she mocked. "Why,
it's all the rage. Nearly