cheeks and eyes burning into the darkness, and a heart as bitter and as sad
as no money, no home, no friends, no hope can make it.

Once he threw a silver dollar from his window to the sidewalk well in front
of her. She did not see it flash downward but she heard it ring upon the
walk. She rushed forward and twice kicked it away from her in her frenzy to
get it. When her bare hand--or was it a claw?--at last closed upon it, she
gave a low scream, looked slyly and fearfully about, then ran as if death
were at her heels.

Soon after Howard was put "on space" he took the best suite of rooms in the
house. It was a strange company which Mrs. Sands had gathered under her
roof. Except Howard there was no one, not even Mrs. Sands herself, who did
not have so much past that there was little left for future. Indeed,
perhaps none of these storm-tossed or wrecked human craft had had more of a
past than Mrs. Sands. There was no mistaking the significance of those deep
furrows filled with powder and plastered with paint, those few hairs tinted
and frizzed. But like all persons with real pasts Mrs. Sands and her
lodgers kept the veil tightly drawn. They confessed to no yesterdays and
they did not dare think of to-morrow. They were incuriously awaiting the
impulse which was sure to come, sure to thrust them on downward.

A new lodger at Mrs. Sand's usually took the best rooms that were to be
had. Then, sometimes slowly, sometimes swiftly, came the retreat upward
until a cubby-hole under the eaves was reached. Finally came precipitate
and baggageless departure, often with a week or two of lodging unpaid. The
next pause, if pause there was, would be still nearer the river-bed or the
Morgue.

One morning when he had been living in Washington Square, South,