“You must judge that for yourself,” said Peter.  “I may tell you, though, that I am quite used to being called a fool,” he finished, tranquilly.

“So?” said she, after another long look.  “Well, I—­what I mean to say is, I wish to God there was more fools like you.  If there was, there’d be less fools like me.”  After a pause she asked, in a subdued voice: 

“You expect to stay in this town long?”

“I leave in the morning.”

“I’m sorry,” said she.  “Not,” she added hastily, “that I want to touch you for more money or anything like that, I don’t.  But I—­well, I’d like to know you was livin’ in the same town, see?”

Peter saw.  But again he had nothing to say.  Young as he was, he knew the absurdity of all talk of reform to such as Gracie.  As things are they can’t reform, they can’t even be prevented.  He looked at her, thoughtfully.

“I’m not only leaving New York, I’m leaving America to-morrow,” he said at last.  “I wish there was something I could do for you.”

She shook her head.  Her little painted face looked pinched.  There were shadows under the eyes that should have been soft and dewy.  “You can’t do nothin’.  I’ll tell you why.  Somehow—­I—­I’d like you to know.”

And she sat there and told him.

“You see?” said she, when she had finished.

“I see,” said Peter; and the hand that held his cigarette trembled.  The thing that struck him most forcibly was the stupid waste of it all.

“Look here, Gracie,” he said at last, “if you ever get—­very unlucky—­and things are too hard for you—­sort of last ditch, you know,—­I want you to go to a certain address.  It’s to my uncle,” he explained, seeing her look blank.  “You’ll send in the card I’m going to give you, and you will say I sent you.  He’ll probably investigate you, you know.  But you just tell him the truth, and say I told you he’d help.  Will you do that!”

She in her turn reflected, watching Peter curiously.  Then she fell to tracing patterns on the table-cloth with the point of her knife.

“All right,” she said.  “If ever I have to, an’ I can find him, I will—­an’ say you sent me.”

Peter took out his pocket memorandum, wrote his uncle’s name and the address of the house in the Seventies which he was presently to occupy, added, “I wish you’d do what you can, for my sake,” and signed it.  He handed the girl the slip of paper, and she thrust it into her low-necked blouse.

“And now,” he finished kindly, “you’d better go home, Gracie, go to bed, and sleep.”  He held out his brown hand, and she, rising from her chair, gripped his fingers as a child might have done, and looked at him with dog’s eyes.

“Good-by!” said she, huskily.  “You are real, ain’t you?”

“Damnably so,” admitted Peter.  “Good-by, then, Gracie.”  And he left her standing by the table, the empty wine-glass before her.  The streets stretched before him emptily.—­That poor, done-for kid!  What is one to do for these Gracies?