At first Blinker feels entirely out of his element, but Florence shows him the spirit in which to accept the tinsel and the rude fun-making.  He soon comes to like it—­and to think very well of the naively “different” girl beside him.

He is treated like all her other cavaliers at the time and place of parting—­she goes home alone.  He returns to his apartment with a new idea of the city’s possibilities.

That same evening Florence finds an intruder unceremoniously invading her room—­a “gang” leader who believes the shot he has just fired at an adversary has been fatal in its effect.  He tells her his story, but says he did not do the shooting.  She believes him, and when the police come to her door in their search for the culprit, she pretends that the man opposite her at the table is her brother.

Later she learns that he has told her a falsehood, but she does not deliver him to justice, and when she finds that the man who was shot is not fatally injured, she sends the shielded one away in safety; for which display of her fine sense of loyalty he becomes a veritable watchdog, never intruding his presence upon her, but being always near to observe the quality of the companions she still allows herself.

Blinker meets her by appointment the next evening, and the faithful Watchdog follows them to Coney Island, vigilant, feeling sure than a man of the evident social status of Blinker can mean no good to a girl in Florence’s station.

On the boat, coming home, Blinker tells Florence that he loves her.  So accustomed is she to this display of sentimentality in her cavaliers that she merely laughs.  He persists, and she indicates a belief that he is just like the rest.  Mention of “the rest” awakes question in Blinker.  He learns that she meets men indiscriminately.  He has a horror of this evidence of what he considers to be moral laxity, and when Florence sees this she is amazed. He has met her in the same way, yet he is shocked that she should meet others!  In justifying her course she explains what sort of place “Brickdust Row” is, and how the girls are driven out.

A fire is discovered on the boat, and in the excitement Blinker and Florence are separated and the Watchdog is unable to find the girl he worships.  She has jumped into the water as the flames drew too close to her.

Later she is found at home by the Watchdog, safe though suffering from shock.  He discovers that the shock is less from exposure than from her discovery that Blinker was serious, and that he refused to condone her mode of meeting men.

Blinker is visited by his lawyer, and in their conversation, a reference to “Brickdust Row” gives Blinker the knowledge that he is the owner of that tenement—­that it is his own fault which gives rise to such unconventional practices as Florence has innocently indulged in.  It is too late, he thinks, now—­too late to change things.  His dream of love is rudely dispelled.