Oh, that
life's hell."
Susan had turned away from her image, was looking at Rosa.
"As for the fast houses----" Rosa shuddered--"I was in one for
a week. I ran away--it was the only way I could escape. I'd
never tell any human being what I went through in that house. . . .
Never!" She watched Susan's fine sympathetic face, and
in a burst of confidence said: "One night the landlady sent me
up with seventeen men. And she kept the seventeen dollars I
made, and took away from me half a dollar one drunken
longshoreman gave me as a present. She said I owed it for
board and clothes. In those houses, high and low, the girls
always owes the madam. They haven't a stitch of their own to
their backs."
The two girls stood facing each other, each looking past the
other into the wind-swept canyon of Broadway--the majestic
vista of lofty buildings, symbols of wealth and luxury so
abundant that it flaunted itself, overflowed in gaudy
extravagance. Finally Susan said:
"Do you ever think of killing yourself?"
"I thought I would," replied the other girl. "But I guess I
wouldn't have. Everybody knows there's no hope, yet they keep
on hopin'. And I've got pretty good health yet, and once in a
while I have some fun. You ought to go to dances--and drink.
You wouldn't be blue _all_ the time, then."
"If it wasn't for the sun," said Susan.
"The sun?" inquired Rosa.
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