oment on the sidewalk. Then she remembered that she had not paid the
cab-driver. She drew a dollar from her purse and handed it to him.
He touched his hat and drove off, leaving her alone in the long empty
street. She wandered away westward, toward strange thoroughfares, where
she was not likely to meet acquaintances. The feeling of aimlessness had
returned. Once she found herself in the afternoon torrent of Broadway,
swept past tawdry shops and flaming theatrical posters, with a
succession of meaningless faces gliding by in the opposite direction...

A feeling of faintness reminded her that she had not eaten since
morning. She turned into a side street of shabby houses, with rows of
ash-barrels behind bent area railings. In a basement window she saw the
sign LADIES' RESTAURANT: a pie and a dish of doughnuts lay against the
dusty pane like petrified food in an ethnological museum. She entered,
and a young woman with a weak mouth and a brazen eye cleared a table for
her near the window. The table was covered with a red and white cotton
cloth and adorned with a bunch of celery in a thick tumbler and a
salt-cellar full of grayish lumpy salt. Julia ordered tea, and sat a
long time waiting for it. She was glad to be away from the noise and
confusion of the streets. The low-ceilinged room was empty, and two or
three waitresses with thin pert faces lounged in the background staring
at her and whispering together. At last the tea was brought in a
discolored metal teapot. Julia poured a cup and drank it hastily. It was
black and bitter, but it flowed through her veins like an elixir. She
was almost dizzy with exhilaration. Oh, how tired, how unutterably tired
she had been!

She drank a second cup, blacker and bitterer, and now her mind was once
more working clearly. She felt as vigorous, as decisive, as when she had
stood on the Van Siderens' door-step--but the wish to return there had
subsided. She saw now the futility of such an attempt--the humiliation
to which it might have exposed her... The pity of it was that she did
not know what to do next. The short winter day was fading, and she
realized that she could not remain much longer in the restaurant without
attracting notice. She paid for her tea and went out into the street.
The lamps were alight, and here and there a basement shop cast an
oblong of gas-light across the fissured pavement. In the dusk there was
something sinister about the aspect of the street, and she haste