cleaners must see this girl as she was then, in a collapse of
smashed hopes, sobbing dreadfully, completely broken down. It wasn't
fair. In all that city of courageous under-dogs and fate-fighters,
there was not one who pretended to careless contentment with a chin
so high as Tootles. He half carried her into the cab, trying with a
queer blundering sympathy to soothe and quiet her. And he had almost
succeeded by the time they reached the brownstone house of sitters,
bedrooms and baths, gas stoves, cubby-holes, the persistent reek of
onions, cigarettes and hot cheese. The hysteria of the artistic
temperament, or the natural exaggeration of an artificial life, had
worn itself out for the time being. Rather pathetic little sobs had
taken its place, it was with a face streaked with the black stuff
from her eyelashes that Tootles turned quickly to Martin at the foot
of the narrow, dirty staircase.

"Let's go up quiet," she said. "If any of the others are about, I
don't want 'em to know tonight. See?"

"I see," said Martin.

And it was good to watch the way in which she took hold of herself
with a grip of iron, scrubbed her face with his handkerchief, dabbed
it thickly with powder from a small silver box, threw back her head
and went up two stairs at a time. On the second floor there was a
cackle of laughter, but doors were shut. On the third all was quiet.
But on the fourth the tall, thin, Raphael-headed man was drunk
again, arguing thickly in the usual cloud of smoke, which drifted
sullenly into the passage through the open door.

With deft fingers Tootles used her latchkey, and they slipped into