The girl locked the door, as the landlady went out, and began taking off her hat and jacket. She stood before me with half-challenging, half-speculative eyes. She was a slim, graceful, shabby figure and a note of pathos came out unexpectedly in a little air of bravado as she rested one hand on her hip and smiled at me. I was standing in front of the mantelpiece, below which was the grate ready to be fired. The girl stood beside me and watched and plainly wondered. She was beginning to suspect that I was not there on the usual errand. Her eyes, so curiously soft and blue, began to irritate me. Her hair I noticed was brown but coarse and dusty--not well kept. These poor little creatures know absolutely nothing of the art of living or fascination. They are the shabbiest pawns in life, mere husks of beauty and living on husks. “Sit down, please,” I said. She obeyed like a child. “So you’re Welsh. What part of Wales do you come from?” She told me some outlandish name. “What were your parents? Poor, I suppose.” “Indeed not,” she bridled with that quaint country accent. “My father was a grocer. He had three stores.” “I don’t believe it,” I said mockingly. “You women lie so. I don’t believe you’re telling me the truth.” It was brutal, but I wanted to get beneath the conventional lies these girls tell, if I could. “Why not?” Her clear eyes looked into mine. “Oh, I don’t. You don’t look to me like the daughter of a man who owned three grocery stores. That would mean he was well-to-do. You don’t expect me to believe that, with you leading this life in London?” She bristled vaguely but without force. “Believe it or not,” she said sullenly. “It’s so.” “Tell me,” I said, “how much can you make out of this business?” “Oh, sometimes more, sometimes less. I don’t walk every day. You know I only walk when I have to. If I pick up a gentleman and if he gives me a good lot I don’t walk very soon again--not until that’s gone. I--I don’t like to very much.” “What do you call a good lot?” “Oh, all sorts of sums. I have been given as high as six pounds.” “That isn’t true,” I said. “You know it isn’t true. You’re talking for effect.” The girl’s face flushed. “It is true. As I’m alive it’s true. It wasn’t in this very room, but it was in this house. He was a rich American. He was from New York. All Americans have money. And he was drunk.” “Yes, all Americans may have money,” I smiled sardonically, “but they don’t go round spending it on such as you in that way. You’re not worth it.” She looked at me, but no angry rage sprang to her eyes. “It’s true just the same,” she said meekly. “You don’t like women, do you?” she asked. “No, not very much.” “You’re a woman-hater. That’s what you are. I’ve seen such.” “Not a woman-hater, no. Simply not very much interested in them.”