This, then, was the environment that Fanny Brandeis had
chosen. On the face of things you would have said she had
chosen well. The inspiration of the roller skates had not
been merely a lucky flash. That idea had been part of the
consistent whole. Her mind was her mother's mind raised to
the nth power, and enhanced by the genius she was trying
to crush. Refusing to die, it found expression in a hundred
brilliant plans, of which the roller skate idea was only
one.

Fanny had reached Chicago on Sunday. She had entered the
city as a queen enters her domain, authoritatively, with no
fear upon her, no trepidation, no doubts. She had gone at
once to the Mendota Hotel, on Michigan Avenue, up-town, away
from the roar of the loop. It was a residential hotel, very
quiet, decidedly luxurious. She had no idea of making it
her home. But she would stay there until she could find an
apartment that was small, bright, near the lake, and yet
within fairly reasonable transportation facilities for her
work. Her room was on the ninth floor, not on the Michigan
Avenue side, but east, overlooking the lake. She spent
hours at the windows, fascinated by the stone and steel city
that lay just below with the incredible blue of the sail-
dotted lake beyond, and at night, with the lights spangling
the velvety blackness, the flaring blaze of Thirty-first
Street's chop-suey restaurants and moving picture houses at
the right; and far, far away, the red and white eye of the
lighthouse winking, blinking, winking, blinking, the rumble
and clank of a flat-wheeled Indiana avenue car, the sound of