He nodded, impressed by the fact that she did not seem to be appealing to his sympathy.  Nor, indeed, did she appear—­in thus picking up the threads of her past—­to be consciously accounting for her present.  She recognized no causation there.

“Say, did you ever get to a place where you just had to have something happen?  When you couldn’t stand bein’ lonely night after night, when you went out on the streets and saw everybody on the way to a good time but you?  We used to look in the newspapers for notices of the big balls, and we’d take the cars to the West End and stand outside the awnings watching the carriages driving up and the people coming in.  And the same with the weddings.  We got to know a good many of the swells by sight.  There was Mrs. Larrabbee,”—­a certain awe crept into her voice—­“and Miss Ferguson—­she’s sweet—­and a lot more.  Some of the girls used to copy their clothes and hats, but Florry and me tried to live honest.  It was funny,” she added irrelevantly, “but the more worn out we were at night, the more we’d want a little excitement, and we used to go to the dance-halls and keep going until we were ready to drop.”

She laughed at the recollection.

“There was a floorwalker who never let me alone the whole time I was at Pratt’s—­he put me in mind of a pallbearer.  His name was Selkirk, and he had a family in Westerly, out on the Grade Suburban . . . .  Some of the girls never came back at all, except to swagger in and buy expensive things, and tell us we were fools to work.  And after a while I noticed Florry was getting discouraged.  We never had so much as a nickel left over on Saturdays and they made us sign a paper, when they hired us, that we lived at home.  It was their excuse for paying us six dollars a week.  They do it at Ferguson’s, too.  They say they can get plenty of girls who do live at home.  I made up my mind I’d go back to Madison, but I kept putting it off, and then father died, and I couldn’t!

“And then, one day, Florry left.  She took her things from the room when I was at the store, and I never saw her again.  I got another roommate.  I couldn’t afford to pay for the room alone.  You wouldn’t believe I kept straight, would you?” she demanded, with a touch of her former defiance.  “I had plenty of chances better than that floorwalker.  But I knew I was good looking, and I thought if I could only hold out I might get married to some fellow who was well fixed.  What’s the matter?”

Hodder’s exclamation had been involuntary, for in these last words she had unconsciously brought home to him the relentless predicament in the lives of these women.  She had been saving herself—­for what?  A more advantageous, sale!

“It’s always been my luck,” she went on reflectingly, “that when what I wanted to happen did happen, I never could take advantage of it.  It was just like that to-night, when you handed me out the bill of fare, and I ordered beefsteak.  And it was like that when—­when he came along —­I didn’t do what I thought I was going to do.  It’s terrible to fall in love, isn’t it?  I mean the real thing.  I’ve read in books that it only comes once, and I guess it’s so.”