" She was not afraid. The street was too brilliant and the great
juggernauts of trolley cars lumbered by every few moments. Moreover, she
could make herself look as cold and remote as the stars above the fog, and
she had drawn herself up to her full five feet seven, thrown her shoulders
back, lifted her chin and lowered her eyelids the merest trifle. She
fancied that the patrician-beauty type would have little or no attraction
for the men who frequented Fillmore Street. Certainly the bluntest of these
males could see that she was not painted, blackened, dyed, nor chewing gum.
Moreover she was in mourning.
But she had reckoned without her youth.
II
"Say, kid, what you doin' all alone?"
A hand passed familiarly through her arm.
Her brain turned somersaults, raced. Should she burst into tears? Turn upon
him with a frozen stare? Appeal for help?
Then she discovered that although astonished she was not at all terrified;
nor very much insulted. Why should she be? A casual remark of the
sophisticated Aileen flashed through her rallying mind: "When a man is even
half way drunk he doesn't know a lady from a trollop, and ten to one the
lady's a trollop anyhow."
She heartily wished that Aileen were in her predicament at the present
moment. What on earth was she to do with the creature?
She had accelerated her steps without speaking or making any foolish
attempts to shake him off; but she knew that her face was crimson, and one
girl tittered as they passed, while another, appreciating the situation,
laughed aloud and cried after her: "Don't be frightened, kid.
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