The streets were fiercely alive.  Among the throngs of well-dressed people one caught swift glimpses of furtive, hurrying figures, and faces that were danger signals.  More than once a few words hissed into Peter’s ears made him turn pale.

It was nearing midnight, and the street was virtually empty, when a girl who had looked at him sharply in passing turned and followed him, and after a glance about to see that no policeman was in sight, stepped to his side and touched him on the elbow.  Peter paused, and his heart contracted.  He had seen among the negroes the careless unmorality as of animals.  There was nothing of the prude in him, but, perhaps because all his life there had been a Vision before his eyes, he had retained a singularly untroubled mental chastity.  His mind was clean with the cleanliness of knowledge.  He could not pretend to misunderstand the girl.  She was nothing but a child in years.  The immaturity of her body showed through her extreme clothes, and even her sharp, painted little face was immature, for all its bold nonchalance.  She was smiling; but one sensed behind her deliberate smile a wolfish anxiety.

“Ain’t you lonesome?” she asked, fluttering her eyelids, and giving the young man a sly, upward glance.

“No,” said Peter, very gently.

“Aw, have a heart!  Can’t you stand a lady somethin’ to eat an’ maybe somethin’ to drink?”

The boy looked at her gravely and compassionately.  Although her particular type was quite new to him, he recognized her for what she was, a member of the oldest profession, the strange woman “whose mouth is smoother than oil, but whose feet go down to death.  Her steps take hold on hell.”  Somehow he could not connect those terrible words with this sharp-featured, painted child.  There was nothing really evil about her except the brutal waste of her.

“Will ten dollars be enough for you?” asked Peter.  The wolfish look in her eyes hurt him.  He felt ashamed and sad.

“Sure!  Come on!” said she, and her face lighted.

“Thank you, I have had my dinner,” said Peter.  But she seized his arm and hurried him down a side street, willy-nilly.  “Seen a cop out of the tail of my eye,” she explained, hurriedly.  “They’re fierce, some of them cops.  I can’t afford to be took up.”

When they had turned the corner, Peter stopped, and took out his pocket-book.  With another searching glance at her, he handed her one five, and two ten-dollar bills.  Perhaps that might save her—­for a while at least.  He lifted his hat, bowed, and had started to walk away, when she ran after him and clutched him by the arm.

“Take back that fiver,” said she, “an’ come and eat with me.  If you got a heart, come an’ eat with me.  I know a little place we can get somethin’ decent:  it’s a dago caffay, but it’s clean an’ decent enough.  Will you come?” Her voice was shaking; he could see her little body trembling.