peals to the men.
Not tearful appeals, not appeals to sympathy or even to
charity, but to passion. They sought in every way to excite.
They exhibited their carefully gotten-up legs; they made
indecent gestures; they said the vilest things; they offered
the vilest inducements; they lowered their prices down and
down. And such men as did not order them off with disdain,
listened with laughter, made jokes at which the wretched
creatures laughed as gayly as if they were not mad with anxiety
and were not hating these men who were holding on to that which
they must have to live.

"Too many out tonight," said Maud as they walked their
beat--Forty-second between Broadway and Eighth Avenue. "I knew
it would be this way. Let's go in here and get warm."

They went into the back room of a saloon where perhaps half a
dozen women were already seated, some of them gray with the
cold against which their thin showy garments were no
protection. Susan and Maud sat at a table in a corner; Maud
broke her rule and drank whiskey with Susan. After they had
taken perhaps half a dozen drinks, Maud grew really
confidential. She always, even in her soberest moments, seemed
to be telling everything she knew; but Susan had learned that
there were in her many deep secrets, some of which not even
liquor could unlock.

"I'm going to tell you something," she now said to Susan. "You
must promise not to give me away."

"Don't tell me," replied Susan. She was used to being
flattered--or victimized, according to the point of view--with
confidences. She assumed Maud was about to confess some secret
about her own self, as she had the almost universal habit of
never thinking of anyone else. "Don't tell me," said she.
"I'm tired of being used to air awful secrets. It makes me
feel like a tenement wash line."

"This is about you," said Maud. "If it's ever found out that
I put you wise, Jim'll have me killed. Yes--killed."

Susan, reckless by this time, laughed. "Oh, trash!" she said.

"No trash at all," insisted Maud. "When you know this town
through and through you'll know that murder's something that
can be arranged as easy as buying a drink. What risk is there
in making one of _us_ 'disappear'? None in the world. I always
feel that Jim'll have me killed some day--unless I go crazy
sometime and kill him. He's stuck on me--or, at least, he's
jealous of me--and if he ever found out I had a
lover--somebody--anybody that didn't pay