the beginning of the story, so that there should be no false
pretenses. One more detail. About Sophy's throat was a slender,
near-gold chain from which was suspended a cheap and glittering La
Valliere. Sophy had not intended it as a sop to the conventions.
It was an offering on the shrine of Fashion, and represented many
lunchless days.

At eleven o'clock one August morning, Louie came to Chicago
from Oskaloosa, Iowa. There was no hay in his hair. The comic
papers have long insisted that the country boy, on his first visit
to the city, is known by his greased boots and his high-water
pants. Don't you believe them. The small-town boy is as
fastidious about the height of his heels and the stripe of his
shift and the roll of his hat-brim as are his city brothers. He
peruses the slangily worded ads of the "classy clothes" tailors,
and when scarlet cravats are worn the small-town boy is not more
than two weeks late in acquiring one that glows like a headlight.

Louie found a rooming-house, shoved his suitcase under the
bed, changed his collar, washed his hands in the gritty water of
the wash bowl, and started out to look for a job.

Louie was twenty-one. For the last four years he had been
employed in the best shoe store at home, and he knew shoe leather
from the factory to the ash barrel. It was almost a religion with
him.

Curiosity, which plays leads in so many life dramas, led Louie
to the rotunda of the tallest building. It was built on the hollow
center plan, with a sheer drop from the twenty-somethingth to the