The streets were filled with the rush-hour floods of people.  The electric lights of Broadway were glowing—­calling moths from miles, from leagues, from hundreds of leagues out of darkness around to come in and attend the singeing school.  Men in accurate clothes, with faces like those carved on cherry stones by the old salts in sailors’ homes, turned and stared at Dulcie as she sped, unheeding, past them.  Manhattan, the night-blooming cereus, was beginning to unfold its dead-white, heavy-odoured petals.

Dulcie stopped in a store where goods were cheap and bought an imitation lace collar with her fifty cents.  That money was to have been spent otherwise—­fifteen cents for supper, ten cents for breakfast, ten cents for lunch.  Another dime was to be added to her small store of savings; and five cents was to be squandered for licorice drops—­the kind that made your cheek look like the toothache, and last as long.  The licorice was an extravagance—­almost a carouse—­but what is life without pleasures?

Dulcie lived in a furnished room.  There is this difference between a furnished room and a boardinghouse.  In a furnished room, other people do not know it when you go hungry.

Dulcie went up to her room—­the third floor back in a West Side brownstone-front.  She lit the gas.  Scientists tell us that the diamond is the hardest substance known.  Their mistake.  Landladies know of a compound beside which the diamond is as putty.  They pack it in the tips of gas-burners; and one may stand on a chair and dig at it in vain until one’s fingers are pink and bruised.  A hairpin will not remove it; therefore let us call it immovable.

So Dulcie lit the gas.  In its one-fourth-candlepower glow we will observe the room.

Couch-bed, dresser, table, washstand, chair—­of this much the landlady was guilty.  The rest was Dulcie’s.  On the dresser were her treasures—­a gilt china vase presented to her by Sadie, a calendar issued by a pickle works, a book on the divination of dreams, some rice powder in a glass dish, and a cluster of artificial cherries tied with a pink ribbon.

Against the wrinkly mirror stood pictures of General Kitchener, William Muldoon, the Duchess of Marlborough, and Benvenuto Cellini.  Against one wall was a plaster of Paris plaque of an O’Callahan in a Roman helmet.  Near it was a violent oleograph of a lemon-coloured child assaulting an inflammatory butterfly.  This was Dulcie’s final judgment in art; but it had never been upset.  Her rest had never been disturbed by whispers of stolen copes; no critic had elevated his eyebrows at her infantile entomologist.

Piggy was to call for her at seven.  While she swiftly makes ready, let us discreetly face the other way and gossip.