sing in a small and foul room four
prematurely old women, all in the family way, two with babies
in arms. One of these was the janitress. Though she was not
a Jewess, she was wearing one of the wigs assumed by orthodox
Jewish women when they marry. She stared at Susan with not a
sign of recognition.

"I am looking for Miss Clara," said Susan.

The janitress debated, shifted her baby from one arm to the
other, glanced inquiringly at the other women. They shook
their heads; she looked at Susan and shook her head. "There
ain't a Clara," said she. "Perhaps she's took another name?"

"Perhaps," conceded Susan. And she described Clara and the
various dresses she had had. At the account of one with
flounces on the skirts and lace puffs in the sleeves, the
youngest of the women showed a gleam of intelligence. "You
mean the girl with the cancer of the breast," said she.

Susan remembered. She could not articulate; she nodded.

"Oh, yes," said the janitress. "She had the third floor back,
and was always kicking because Mrs. Pfister kept a guinea pig
for her rheumatism and the smell came through."

"Has she gone?" asked Susan.

"Couple of weeks."

"Where?"

The janitress shrugged her shoulders. The other women
shrugged their shoulders. Said the janitress:

"Her feller stopped coming. The cancer got awful bad. I've
saw a good many--they're quite plentiful down this way. I
never see a worse'n hers. She didn't have no money. Up to
the hospital they tried a new cure on her that made her
gallopin' worse. The day before I was going to have to go to
work and put her out--she left."

"Can't you give me any idea?" urged Susan.

"She didn't take her things," said the janitress meaningly.
"Not a stitch."

"The--the river?"

The janitress shrugged her shoulders. "She always said she
would, and I guess----"

Again the fat, stooped shoulders lifted and lowered. "She was
most crazy with pain."

There was a moment's silence, then Susan murmured, "Thank
you," and went back to the hall. The house was exhaling a
frightful stench--the odor of cheap kerosene, of things that
passed there for food, of animals human and lower, of death
and decay. On her way out she dropped a dollar into the lap
of the little girl with the mange. A parrot was shrieking
from an upper window. On the topmost fire escape was a row of
geraniums blooming sturdily. Her taxicab had moved up the
street, pushed out of place by a h