The best of them were not averse to being picked up and treated to
ice-cream-soda or the more delectable sundae. A few there were, and they
were not always to be distinguished by the kohl round their eyes, the dead
white of their cheeks, the magenta of their lips, who, ignoring the "bums"
and "cadets" lounging at the corners or before the saloons, directed intent
long glances at every passing man who looked as if he had the "roll" to
treat them handsomely in the back parlor of a saloon, or possibly stake
them at a gaming table. The town, still in its brief period of insufferable
virtue, was "closed," but the lid was not on as irremovably as the police
led the good mayor to believe; and these girls, who traveled not in
"bunches" but in pairs, if they had not already begun a career of
profitable vice, were anxious to start but did not exactly know how.
Fillmore Street was not the hunting ground of rich men; but men with a
night's money came there, and many "boobs" from the country.
Alexina had heard of Fillmore Street from Aileen, who investigated
everything, escorted by her uxorious parent, and had been informed that
many of these girls were "decent enough"; "much more decent than I would be
in the circumstances: work all day, coarse underclothes, no place to see a
beau but the street. I'd go straight to the devil and play the only game I
had for all it was worth."
But to Alexina they all looked appalling, abandoned, the last cry in
"badness.
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