her relations with the Bussard and his ill-fortuned
family.

The Bussard's circle of intimates was amongst those who lay outside the
law, those who gambled for their livelihood by staking their wits, to
win against the toils of the police; and so, more and more, she had come
into close and intimate contact with the criminal element of New York,
until to-day, throughout its length and breadth, she was known, and,
she had reason to believe, was loved and trusted by every crook in the
underworld. It was a strange eulogy, self-pronounced! But it was none
the less true. Then, she had been Rhoda Gray; now, even the Bussard,
doubtless, had forgotten her name in the one with which he himself, at
that queer baptismal font of crimeland, had christened her--the White
Moll. It even went further than that. It embraced what might be called
the entourage of the underworld, the police and the social workers with
whom she inevitably came in contact. These, too, had long known her
as the White Moll, and had come, since she had volunteered no further
information, tacitly to accept her as such, and nothing more.

Again she shook her head. It wasn't altogether a normal life. She was
only a woman, with all the aspirations of a woman, with all the yearning
of youth for its measure of gayety and pleasure. True, she had not made
a recluse of herself outside her work; but, equally, on the other hand,
she had not made any intimate friends in her own station in life. She
had never purposed continuing indefinitely the work she was doing, nor
did she now; but, little by little, it had forced its claims upon
her until those claims were not easy to ignore. Even though the
circumstances in which her father had left her were barely more than
sufficient for a modest little flat uptown, there was still always a
little surplus, and that surplus counted in certain quarters for very
much indeed. But it wasn't only that. The small amount of money that she
was able to spend in that way had little to do with it. The bonds which
linked her to the sordid surroundings that she had come to know so well
were stronger far than that. There wasn't any money involved in this
visit, for instance, that she was going now to make to Gypsy Nan. Gypsy
Nan was...

Rhoda Gray had halted before the doorway of a small, hovel-like,
two-story building that was jammed in between two tenements, which,
relatively, in their own class, were even more disreputable than was the
little