Out in the sun-washed streets the wind had hauled a bit. It cut as she bent into it. With her additional quarter, she still had two dollars and twenty cents, and that afternoon, in lower Sixth Avenue, at the instance of another small card fluttering out in the wind, she applied as dishwasher in a lunch-room and again obtained--this time at six dollars a week and suppers. The Jefferson Market Lunch Room, thick with kicked-up sawdust and the fumes of hissing grease, was sunk slightly below the level of the sidewalk, a fitting retreat for the mole-like humanity that dined furtively at its counter. Men with too short coat-sleeves and collars turned up; women with beery eyes and uneven skirt-hems dank with the bilge-water of life's lower decks. Lower Sixth Avenue is the abode of these shadows. Where are they from, and whither going--these women without beauty, who walk the streets without handkerchiefs, but blubbering with too much or too little drink? What is the terrible riddle? Why, even as they blubber, are there women whose bodies have the quality of cream, slipping in between scented sheets? Ann 'Lisbeth, hers not to argue, but accept, dallied with no such question. Behind the lunch-room, a sink of unwashed dishes rose to a mound. She plunged her hands into tepid water that clung to her like fuzz. "Ugh!" "Go to it!" said the proprietor, who wore a black flap over one eye. "Dey won't bite. If de grease won't cut, souse 'em wit' lye. Don't try to muzzle no breakage on me, neither, like the slut before you. I kin hear a cup crack." "I won't," said Ann 'Lisbeth, a wave of the furry water slopping out and down her dress-front. Followed four days spent in the grease-laden heat of the kitchen, the smell of strong foods, raw meat, and fish stews thick above the sink. She had moved farther down-town, against car fare; but because she talked now constantly in her sleep and often cried out, there were knockings from the opposite side of the partitions and oaths. For two evenings she sat until midnight in a small rear café, again pleasantly muzzy over three glasses of beer and the thick warmth of the room. Another night she carried home a small bottle, tucking it beneath her coat as she emerged to the street. She was grease-stained now, in spite of precautions, and her hat, with her hair uncurled to sustain it, had settled down over her ears, grotesquely large. The week raced with her funds. On the sixth day she paid out her last fifty cents for room-rent, and, without breakfast, filched her lunch from a half-eaten order of codfish balls returned to the kitchen. Yes, reader; but who are you to turn away sickened and know no more of this? You who love to bask in life's smile, but shudder at its drool! A Carpenter did not sicken at a leper. He held out a hand. That night, upon leaving, she asked for a small advance on her week's wage, retreating before the furiously stained apron-front and the one eye of the proprietor cast down upon her.