Taxicabs darted or stood with motors sonorously rumbling in the street below. Round the corner, Longacre Square roared with the traffic of its several lines of surface-cars and its unending procession of motor-driven vehicles. The windows of the theatre across the way were open, and through them drifted the clatter of a piano with the surge of half a hundred feminine voices repeating over and over the burden of a chorus--betraying the fact that a rehearsal was in progress. At one of the open fire-escape exits lounged a youth in his shirt-sleeves, smoking a cigarette, and conversing amiably with a young woman in a stiffly-starched white shirtwaist, ankle-length skirt, and brazen hair: principals, Joan surmised, waiting for their turn, when the chorus had learned its business acceptably. Nearer at hand, in the room to the right of Joan's, a woman with a good voice was humming absently an aria from "La Tosca," while to the left another woman was audible, her strained and nervous accents stuttering on in an endless monologue of abuse, evidently aimed at the head of a husband who, if he had been "drinking again," retained at least wit enough to attempt no sort of interruption or rejoinder. Joan smiled in comprehension. Breathing long and deep of tepid air flavoured strongly with dust and the effluvia of dead cigars and cigarettes, she turned away from the window, lifted her arms and spread them wide, luxuriously. "Thank God!" she murmured with profound sincerity--"for a place you can stretch in!" XXX With scant delay Joan began to pick up acquaintances: nothing is easier in that milieu to which the girl dedicated herself. The process of widening her circle began with meeting the girl whom Joan had heard singing in the adjoining bedchamber. They passed twice in the corridors of the Astoria Inn before Joan had been resident there twenty-four hours, and on the second occasion the girl with the voice nodded in a friendly way and enquired if Joan didn't think the weather was simply awf'ly lovely today. Joan replied in the affirmative, and their acquaintanceship languished for as long as twelve hours. Then, toward six in the evening, the girl presented herself at Joan's door in a condition of candid deshabille, wishing to borrow a pair of curling-irons. Being accommodated, she came on into the room, perched herself on the edge of the bed, and made herself known. Her name was Minnie Hession and she had been singing in the chorus for seven years. Originally a prettyish, plump-bodied brunette, she was at present what she herself termed "black-and-tan": in the middle of the process of "letting her hair go back." Her father was Chief of Police of some Western city (name purposely withheld: Joan was, however, assured that she would be surprised if she knew _what_ city) and her folks had heaps of money and had been wild with her when she insisted on going on the stage.