Brent had given her the thing she lacked--had given her a
definite, concrete, tangible purpose. He had shown her the
place where, if she should arrive, she might be free of that
hideous slavery of the miserable mass; and he had inspired her
with the hope that she could reach it.
And that was the Susan Lenox who came back to the little room
in Delancey Street at half-past five.
Curiously, while she was thinking much about Brent, she was
thinking even more about Burlingham--about their long talks on
the show boat and in their wanderings in Louisville and
Cincinnati. His philosophy, his teachings--the wisdom he had,
but was unable to apply--began to come back to her. It was
not strange that she should remember it, for she had admired
him intensely and had listened to his every word, and she was
then at the time when the memory takes its clearest and
strongest impressions. The strangeness lay in the suddenness
with which Burlingham, so long dead, suddenly came to life,
changed from a sad and tender memory to a vivid possibility,
advising her, helping her, urging her on.
Clara, dressed to go to dinner with her lover, was waiting to
arrange about their meeting to make together the usual rounds
in the evening. "I've got an hour before I'm due at the
hospital," said Susan. "Let's go down to Kelly's for a drink."
While they were going and as they sat in the clean little back
room of Kelly's well ordered and select corner saloon, Clara
gave her all the news she had gathered in an afternoon of
visits among their acquaintances--how, because of a
neighborhood complaint, there was to be a fake raid on
Gussie's opium joint at midnight; that Mazie had caught a
frightful fever; and that Nettie was dying in Governeur of the
stab in the stomach her lover had given her at a ball three
nights before; that the police had raised the tariff for
sporting houses, and would collect seventy-five and a hundred
a month protection money where the charge had been twenty-five
and fifty--the plea was that the reformers, just elected and
hoping for one term only, were compelling a larger fund from
vice than the old steady year-in-and-year-out ruling crowd.
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