“Julia, girl,” said Sadie Corn, “ever since the world began there’s been hookers and hooked.  And there always will be.  I was born a hooker.  So were you.  Time was when I used to cry out against it too.  But shucks!  I know better now.  I wouldn’t change places.  Being a hooker gives you such an all-round experience like of mankind.  The hooked only get a front view.  They only see faces and arms and chests.  But the hookers—­they see the necks and shoulderblades of this world, as well as faces.  It’s mighty broadening—­being a hooker.  It’s the hookers that keep this world together, Julia, and fastened up right.  It wouldn’t amount to much if it had to depend on such as that!” She nodded her head in the direction the cerise figure had taken.  “The height of her ambition is to get the cuticle of her nails trained back so perfectly that it won’t have to be cut; and she don’t feel decently dressed to be seen in public unless she’s wearing one of those breastplates of orchids.  Envy her!  Why, Julia, don’t you know that as you were standing here in your black dress as she passed she was envying you!”

“Envying me!” said Julia, and laughed a short laugh that had little of mirth in it.  “You don’t understand, Sadie!”

Sadie Corn smiled a rather sad little smile.

“Oh, yes, I do understand.  Don’t think because a woman’s homely, and always has been, that she doesn’t have the same heartaches that a pretty woman has.  She’s built just the same inside.”

Julia turned her head to stare at her wide-eyed.  It was a long and trying stare, as though she now saw Sadie Corn for the first time.

Sadie, smiling up at the girl, stood it bravely.  Then, with a sudden little gesture, Julia patted the wrinkled, sallow cheek and was off down the hall and round the corner to two-eighteen.

The lights still blazed in the bedroom.  Julia closed the door and stood with her back to it, looking about the disordered chamber.  In that marvellous way a room has of reflecting the very personality of its absent owner, room two-eighteen bore silent testimony to the manner of woman who had just left it.  The air was close and overpoweringly sweet with perfume—­sachet, powder—­the scent of a bedroom after a vain and selfish woman has left it.  The litter of toilet articles lay scattered about on the dresser.  Chairs and bed held garments of lace and silk.  A bewildering negligee hung limply over a couch; and next it stood a patent-leather slipper, its mate on the floor.

Julia saw these things in one accustomed glance.  Then she advanced to the middle of the room and stooped to pick up a pink wadded bedroom slipper from where it lay under the bed.  And her hand touched a coat of velvet and fur that had been flung across the counterpane—­touched it and rested there.

The coat was of stamped velvet and fur.  Great cuffs of fur there were, and a sumptuous collar that rolled from neck to waist.  There was a lining of vivid orange.  Julia straightened up and stood regarding the garment, her hands on her hips.