we are wildly ill at ease when we dream of walking naked in a crowded
street. At odd moments during the day Sophy had found herself rubbing
the spot furiously with her unlovely handkerchief, and shivering a
little. She had never told the other girls about that kiss.

So--there you have Sophy and her costume. You may take her or leave her.
I purposely placed these defects in costuming right at the beginning of
the story, so that there should be no false pretenses. One more detail.
About Sophy's throat was a slender, near-gold chain from which was
suspended a cheap and glittering La Valliere. Sophy had not intended it
as a sop to the conventions. It was an offering on the shrine of
Fashion, and represented many lunchless days.

At eleven o'clock one August morning, Louie came to Chicago from
Oskaloosa, Iowa. There was no hay in his hair. The comic papers have
long insisted that the country boy, on his first visit to the city, is
known by his greased boots and his high-water pants. Don't you believe
them. The small-town boy is as fastidious about the height of his heels
and the stripe of his shift and the roll of his hat-brim as are his city
brothers. He peruses the slangily worded ads of the "classy clothes"
tailors, and when scarlet cravats are worn the small-town boy is not more
than two weeks late in acquiring one that glows like a headlight.

Louie found a rooming-house, shoved his suitcase under the bed, changed
his collar, washed his hands in the gritty water of the wash bowl, and
started out to look for a job.

Louie was twenty-one. For the last four years he had been employed in
the best shoe store at home, and he knew shoe leather from the factory to
the ash barrel. It was almost a religion with him.

Curiosity, which plays leads in so many life dramas, led Louie to the
rotunda of the tallest building. It was built on the hollow center plan,
with a sheer drop from the twenty-somethingth to the main floor. Louie
stationed himself in the center of the mosaic floor, took off his hat,
bent backward almost double and gazed, his mouth wide open. When he
brought his muscles slowly back into normal position he tried hard not to
look impressed. He glanced about, sheepishly, to see if any one was
laughing at him, and his eye encountered the electric-lighted glass
display case of the shoe company upstairs. The case was filled with pink
satin slippers and cunning velvet boots, and the newest thing in br