“No, I won’t,” said May.  “It seems to me it’s pretty hard lines that a poor girl can’t get the money she’s worked as hard for as I have.”

The other girl pushed herself in front of May and spoke to Carroll, and there was something womanly and beautiful in her face.  “I have a real good place,” she said, in a low voice, and she enunciated like a lady.  “A real good place, and I’ll look out for May till she gets one, and I can wait until you are able to pay me.”

“I will pay you all as soon as possible.  I give you all my word I will pay you in the end,” said Carroll.

He seemed to see the three go out in a sort of dream.  It did not really seem to him that it was he, Arthur Carroll, who was sitting there in that smoking, greasy atmosphere, before that table covered with a stained cloth, over which the waiter had ostentatiously spread a damp napkin, with that bowl of canned tomato-soup before him, and that thick cup of coffee, with those three unhappy young creditors, who had reviled and, worse than reviled, pitied him, passing out, with the open glances of amused curiosity fastened upon him on every side.

“Guess that dude is down on his luck,” he heard a young man at his left say.

“Guess he put the money he’d ought to have paid that young lady with into his overcoat,” his companion, a girl with a picture-hat, and a wide lace collar over her coat, responded.

Carroll felt that he was overwhelmed, beaten, at bay before utter ignominy.  The thought flashed across him, as he tried to swallow some more of the soup, that in some respects, if he had been a murderer or a great bank defaulter with detectives on his track, the situation would at least have been more endurable.  The horrible pettiness of it all, constituted the maddening sting of it.  While he was thinking this the girl they called May came flying back, her blond crest bobbing, her cheeks blazing.  She looked like a beautiful and exceedingly vulgar little fury.  She came close to Carroll, while the other girl’s voice was heard at the door pleading with her to come back.

“I won’t come back till I have said my say, so there!” she called back.  Then she addressed Carroll very loudly.  She was transformed for the time.  Hysteria had her in its clutch.  She was half-fed, half-clothed, made desperate by repeated failures.  There was also a love affair in the background.  She was, in reality, not so very far removed from the carbolic-acid crisis.  “I say,” said she.  “I say, you!  You’d better look out!  You’d better pony up pretty quickly or you’ll get into trouble you don’t count on.  There was a man at the office that morning after you quit, and if he should happen to walk in here and see you, you’d have a policeman after you.  You’d better look out!”

Carroll felt his face flush hot.  For the first time in his life he was conscious of being actually down.  He realized the sensation of the under dog, and he realized his utter helplessness, his utter lack of defence against this small, pretty girl who was attacking him.  Everybody in the place seemed listening.  Some of the people at the farther tables came nearer, other’s were craning their necks.  The girl gave her head an indescribable toss, at once vicious, coquettish, and triumphant.  Her blond crest tossed, the scoop of her red hat rocked.