With her few
personal possessions in a package she descended the stairs
unnoticed, went out into the rain. At the corner of Sixth
Avenue she paused, looked up and down the street. It was
almost deserted. Now and then a streetwalker, roused early by
a lover with perhaps a family waiting for him, hurried by,
looking piteous in the daylight which showed up false and dyed
hair, the layers of paint, the sad tawdriness of battered
finery from the cheapest bargain troughs.
Susan went slowly up Sixth Avenue. Two blocks, and she saw a
girl enter the side door of a saloon across the way. She
crossed the street, pushed in at the same door, went on to a
small sitting-room with blinds drawn, with round tables, on
every table a match stand. It was one of those places where
streetwalkers rest their weary legs between strolls, and sit
for company on rainy or snowy nights, and take shy men for
sociability-breeding drinks and for the preliminary bargaining.
The air of the room was strong with stale liquor and tobacco,
the lingering aroma of the night's vanished revels. In the far
corner sat the girl she had followed; a glass of raw whiskey
and another of water stood on the table before her. Susan
seated herself near the door and when the swollen-faced, surly
bartender came, ordered whiskey. She poured herself a
drink--filled the glass to the brim. She drank it in two
gulps, set the empty glass down.
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