ned out the light, darted down stairs
and into the street. At Times Square she took the Subway for
the Bowery. To change one's world, one need not travel far in
New York; the ocean is not so wide as is the gap between the
Tenderloin and the lower East Side.

CHAPTER VIII

SHE had thought of escape daily, hourly almost, for nearly five
months. She had advanced not an inch toward it; but she never
for an instant lost hope. She believed in her destiny, felt
with all the strength of her health and vitality that she had
not yet found her place in the world, that she would find it,
and that it would be high. Now--she was compelled to escape,
and this with only seventeen dollars and in the little time
that would elapse before Palmer returned to consciousness and
started in pursuit, bent upon cruel and complete revenge.
She changed to an express train at the Grand Central Subway
station, left the express on impulse at Fourteenth Street, took
a local to Astor Place, there ascended to the street.

She was far indeed from the Tenderloin, in a region not visited
by the people she knew. As for Freddie, he never went below
Fourteenth Street, hated the lower East Side, avoided anyone
from that region of his early days, now shrouded in a mystery
that would not be dispelled with his consent. Freddie would
not think of searching for her there; and soon he would believe
she was dead--drowned, and at the bottom of river or bay. As
she stepped from the exit of the underground, she saw in the
square before her, under the Sunset Cox statue, a Salvation
Army corps holding a meeting. She heard a cry from the center
of the crowd:

"The wages of sin is death!"

She drifted into the fringe of the crowd and glanced at the
little group of exhorters and musicians. The woman who was
preaching had taken the life of the streets as her text. Well
fed and well clad and certain of a clean room to sleep
in--certain of a good living, she was painting the moral
horrors of the street life.

"The wages of sin is death!" she shouted.

She caught Susan's eye, saw the cynical-bitter smile round her
lips. For Susan had the feeling that, unsuspected by the upper
classes, animates the masses as to clergy and charity workers
of all kinds--much the same feeling one would have toward the
robber's messenger who came bringing from his master as a
loving gift some worthless trifle from the stolen goods. Not
from clergy, not from charity wo