well as by day. Those hideous hyenas of the midnight streets are never
deceived. By one glance they can distinguish between a good woman and
those poor wandering ghosts of dead modesty and honour, who flit
restlessly back and forth from alleys dark to bright gas glare; but
bring one of these men to book, and he will declare that "decent women
have no right to be in the streets after nightfall," as though citizens
were to maintain public highways for the sole use one-half the time of
all the evil things that hide from light to creep out at dark and meet
those companions who are fair by day and foul by night.

Some girls never learn to face the homeward walk with steady nerves,
others grow used to the swift approach, the rapidly spoken word, and
receive them with set, stony face and deaf ears; but oh, the terror and
the shame of it at first! And this horror of the night takes so many
forms that it is hard to say which one is the most revolting--hard to
decide between the vile innuendo whispered by a sober brute or the
roared ribaldry of a drunken beast.

In one respect I differ from most of my companions in misery, since
they almost invariably fear most the drunkard; while I ground my greater
fear of the sober man upon the simple fact that I can't outrun him as I
can a drunken one, at a pinch. One night, in returning home from a
performance of "Divorce,"--a very long play that brought me into the
street extra late,--a shrieking man flew across my path, and as a second
rushed after him with knife uplifted for a killing blow, his foot caught
in mine, and as he pitched forward the knife sank into his victim's arm
instead of his back as he had intended; and with the cries of "Murder!
Police!" ringing in my ears, I ran as if I were the murderess. These
things are in themselves a pretty high price to pay for being an
actress.