of cast-steel, capable, according to rumour, of defying the axes of any
number of raiding reformers.

Then emerged one of the most beautiful women that I had ever seen.

I should have called her a girl, for she could not have been more than
twenty years of age. Her hair was of a fair brown, the features
modelled splendidly, the head poised upon a flawless throat that
gleamed white beneath a neckpiece of magnificent sable.

She carried a sable muff, too, and under these furs was a dress of
unstylish fashion and cut that contrasted curiously with them. I
thought that those loose sleeves had passed away before the nineteenth
century died. In one hand she carried a bag, into which she was
stuffing a large roll of bills.

As she stepped down to the street the dog leaped up at her. A hand
fell caressingly upon the creature's head, and I knew that she had one
servant who would be faithful unto death.

She passed so close to me that her dress brushed my overcoat, and for
an instant her eyes met mine. There was a look in them that startled
me--terror and helplessness, as though she had suffered some benumbing
shock which made her actions more automatic than conscious.

This was no woman of the class that one might expect to find in Daly's.
There was innocence in the face and in the throat, uplifted, as one
sees it in young girls.

I was bewildered. What was a girl like that doing in Daly's at half