"He has asked me," answered the girl with a swagger. "Not sure that it
would suit me now. They're not so nice to you when they've got you fixed
up. So long."

She turned abruptly and walked rapidly away. Joan moved instinctively in
the opposite direction, and after a few minutes found herself in a broad
well-lighted thoroughfare. A newsboy was shouting his wares.

"'Orrible murder of a woman. Shockin' details. Speshul," repeating it
over and over again in a hoarse, expressionless monotone.

He was selling the papers like hot cakes; the purchasers too eager to
even wait for their change. She wondered, with a little lump in her
throat, how many would have stopped to buy had he been calling instead:
"Discovery of new sonnet by Shakespeare. Extra special."

Through swinging doors, she caught glimpses of foul interiors, crowded
with men and women released from their toil, taking their evening
pleasure. From coloured posters outside the great theatres and music
halls, vulgarity and lewdness leered at her, side by side with
announcements that the house was full. From every roaring corner,
scintillating lights flared forth the merits of this public benefactor's
whisky, of this other celebrity's beer: it seemed the only message the
people cared to hear. Even among the sirens of the pavement, she noticed
that the quiet and merely pretty were hardly heeded. It was everywhere
the painted and the overdressed that drew the roving eyes.

She remembered a pet dog that someone had given her when she was a girl,
and how one afternoon she had walked with the tears streaming down her