te her efforts at "dressiness" she was in her
best hour homely and nearly shapeless. In night dress and
released from corsets she was hideous and monstrous. "I
thought so!" she shrieked. "I thought so!"

"I heard a burglar, mother," whined Lange, an abject and
guilty figure.

"Shut your mouth, you loafer!" shrieked Mrs. Lange. And she
turned to Susan. "You gutter hussy, get on your clothes and
clear out!"

"But--Mrs. Lange----" began Susan.

"Clear out!" she shouted, opening the outer hall. "Dress
mighty damn quick and clear out!"

"Mother, you'll wake the people upstairs," pleaded Lange--and
Susan had never before realized how afraid of his wife the
little man was. "For God's sake, listen to sense."

"After I've thrown you--into the streets," cried his wife,
beside herself with jealous fury. "Get dressed, I tell you!"
she shouted at Susan.

And the girl hurried into her clothes, making no further
attempt to speak. She knew that to plead and to explain would
be useless; even if Mrs. Lange believed, still she would drive
from the house the temptation to her husband. Lange, in a
quaking, cowardly whine, begged his wife to be sensible and
believe his burglar story. But with each half-dozen words he
uttered, she interrupted to hurl obscene epithets at him or at
Susan. The tenants of the upstairs flats came down. She told
her wrongs to a dozen half-clad men, women and children; they
took her side at once, and with the women leading showered vile
insults upon Susan. The uproar was rising, rising. Lange
cowered in a corner, crying bitterly like a whipped child.
Susan, only partly dressed, caught up her hat and rushed into
the hall. Several women struck at her as she passed. She
stumbled on the stairs, almost fell headlong. With the most
frightful words in tenement house vocabulary pursuing her she
fled into the street, and did not pause until she was within a
few yards of the Bowery. There she sat down on a doorstep and,
half-crazed by the horror of her sudden downfall, laced her
shoes and buttoned her blouse and put on her hat with fumbling,
shaking fingers. It had all happened so quickly that she would
have thought she was dreaming but for the cold night air and
the dingy waste of the Bowery with the streetwalkers and
drunken bums strolling along under the elevated tracks. She
had trifled with the opportunity too long. It had flown in
disgust, dislodging her as it took flight. If she would