"How did you get here?" Lise demanded, coming toward her. "Who told you
where I was? What business have you got sleuthing 'round after me like
this?"

For a moment Janet was speechless once more, astounded that Lise could
preserve her effrontery in such an atmosphere, could be insensible to the
evils lurking in this house--evils so real to Janet that she seemed
actually to feel them brushing against her.

"Lise, come away from here," she pleaded, "come home with me!"

"Home!" said Lise, defiantly, and laughed. "What do you take me for? Why
would I be going home when I've been trying to break away for two years?
I ain't so dippy as that--not me! Go home like a good little girl and
march back to the Bagatelle and ask 'em to give me another show standing
behind a counter all day. Nix! No home sweet home for me! I'm all for
easy street when it comes to a home like that."

Heartless, terrific as the repudiation was, it struck a self-convicting,
almost sympathetic note in Janet. She herself had revolted against the
monotony and sordidness of that existence She herself! She dared not
complete the thought, now.

"But this!" she exclaimed.

"What's the matter with it?" Lise demanded. "It ain't Commonwealth
Avenue, but it's got Fillmore Street beat a mile. There ain't no whistles
hereto get you out of bed at six a.m., for one thing. There ain't no
geezers, like Walters, to nag you 'round all day long. What's the matter
with it?"

Something in Lise's voice roused Janet's spirit to battle.

"What's the matter with it?" she cried. "It's hell--that's the matter
with it. Can't you see it? Can't you feel it? You don't know what it
means, or you'd come home with me."

"I guess I know what it means as well as you do," said Lise, sullenly.
"We've all got to croak sometime, and I'd rather croak this way than be
smothered up in Hampton. I'll get a run for my money, anyway."

"No, you don't know what it means," Janet repeated, "or you wouldn't talk
like that. Do you think this man will support you, stick to you? He
won't, he'll desert you, and you'll have to go on the streets."

A dangerous light grew in Lise's eyes.

"He's as good as any other man, he's as good as Ditmar," she said.
"They're all the same, to girls like us."

Janet's heart caught, it seemed to stop beating. Was this a hazard on
Lise's part, or did she speak from knowledge? And yet what did it matter
whether Lise knew or only suspected, if her words were tr