sheer handkerchiefs and stacks of webby lingerie. Then for a while she
stood quite helplessly, looking into the mirror, her hands closed about
her throat.

"Please, God, where?"

A one-inch square of newspaper clipping, apparently gouged from the
sheet with a hairpin, caught her eye from the top of one of the
gold-backed hairbrushes. Dawningly, Alma read.

It described in brief detail the innovation of a newly equipped
narcotic clinic on the Bowery below Canal Street, provided to medically
administer to the pathological cravings of addicts.

Fifteen minutes later Alma emerged from the Subway at Canal Street, and,
with three blocks toward her destination ahead, started to run.

At the end of the first block she saw her mother, in the sable coat and
the black-lace hat, coming toward her.

Her first impulse was to run faster and yoo-hoo, but she thought better
of it and, by biting her lips and digging her finger nails, was able to
slow down to a casual walk.

Carrie's fur coat was flaring open and, because of the quality of her
attire down there where the bilge waters of the city tide flow and eddy,
stares followed her.

Once, to the stoppage of Alma's heart, she saw Carrie halt and say a
brief word to a truckman as he crossed the sidewalk with a bill of