ndent drummed impatiently with his fingers. "I can't listen
to all this. Haven't time. Fill out your blank, and if--"

All that latent dramatic force which is a heritage of her race came to
the girl's aid now.

"The blank! How can I say on a blank that I'm leaving because I want to
be where real people are? What chance has a girl got over there on the
West Side? I'm different. I don't know why, but I am. Look at my face!
Where should I get red cheeks from? From not having enough to eat half
the time and sleeping three in a bed?"

She snatched off her shabby glove and held one hand out before the man's
face.

"From where do I get such hands? Not from selling hardware over at
Twelfth and Halsted. Look at it! Say, couldn't that hand sell silk and
lace?"

Some one has said that to make fingers and wrists like those which Ray
Willets held out for inspection it is necessary to have had at least
five generations of ancestors who have sat with their hands folded in
their laps. Slender, tapering, sensitive hands they were, pink-tipped,
temperamental. Wistful hands they were, speaking hands, an inheritance,
perhaps, from some dreamer ancestor within the old-world ghetto, some
long-haired, velvet-eyed student of the Talmud dwelling within the pale
with its squalor and noise, and dreaming of unseen things beyond the
confining gates--things rare and exquisite and fine.

"Ashamed of your folks?" snapped the superintendent.

"N-no--No! But I want to be different. I am different! Give me a chance,
will you? I'm straight. And I'll work. And I can sell goods. Try me."

That all-pervading greyness seemed to have lifted from the man at the
desk. The brown flecks in the eyes seemed to spread and engulf the
surrounding colourlessness. His face, too, took on a glow that seemed to
come from within. It was like the lifting of a thick grey mist on a
foggy morning, so that the sun shines bright and clear for a brief
moment before the damp curtain rolls down again and effaces it.

He leaned forward in his chair, a queer half-smile on his face.

"I'll give you your chance," he said, "for one month. At the end of that
time I'll send for you. I'm not going to watch you. I'm not going to
have you watched. Of course your sale slips will show the office whether
you're selling goods or not. If you're not they'll discharge you. But
that's routine. What do you want to sell?"

"What do I want to--Do you mean--Why, I want to sell the lacy
things