He rose from the bench, impoverished by the effort that he had made to counteract a day of toil, and trudged homeward. CHAPTER VI. After stumbling through another day of heaving muscles and bruised shins, with his self-hatred gloating over the slavery of his body, he met Petersen and the two girls at a down-town street-corner, grinning at the thought of what this experience might hold, for he liked the idea of pretending to be a sensual beggar while a sneer within him played the part of a bystander. Petersen’s sweetheart, Katie Anderson, was a short, plump girl who tried, with the incessant swiftness of her tongue, to apologize for the excessive slowness of her thoughts. The coarse roundness of her face was determinedly obscured by rouge and powder, and her large brown eyes were continually shifting, as though they feared that stillness might betray some secret which they held. Her face knew a species of sly and mild cunning not unlike that of a rabbit frequently beaten by life but clinging to its mask of courage while hopping through the forest of sensual experience. Her friend, Lucy Melkin, was more subdued and helplessly candid. Her small slender body stooped a little as though some unseen hand were pressing too familiarly upon one of her shoulders--a hand of exhausted fear--and the pale oval of her face had the twist of a loosely pleading infant beneath its idiotic red and white. Her blue eyes seemed to be endlessly waiting for something to strike them and wondering why the blow failed to arrive on time. Petersen suggested that they should visit an adjacent vaudeville theater and when Carl and the others agreed they walked through the crowded streets. “Baby, but I’ve had some day,” said Katie. “Them shoppers sure get on your nerves, I’m telling you. But you’re not gonna let me work all the time, are you, Charlie dear?” “There’s no harm in workin’,” said Petersen, not wanting to be quite placed in the position of disdaining an essential fact within his life. “No harm. I gotta take a lot of sass myself from the foreman but it’s all in the day’s game. You don’t get nothin’ easy in this world, ’less you’re a crook, and if y’are you’ll soon wind up in a place where ya don’t wanta be. But still, a good-lookin’ girl like you, Katie, shouldn’t hafta stand on her feet all day. Don’t be afraid, I’ll make it easier for ya pretty soon.” “Now Charle-e, the way you flatter is somethin’ terrible,” said Katie, with a simper of nude delight. “I suppose Mister Felman would like to get some nice girl too, wouldn’t you, Mister Felman? Or maybe you’ve got two or three already. You men can never be trusted.” “No, I haven’t been lucky,” said Carl, secretly exploding with a laughter that was partly directed at himself.