"Apologize to you!" Joan caught her breath sharply, and her next words came without premeditation; she was barely conscious, in her rage, that she employed them: "I'll be damned if I do!" With an inarticulate cry, maddened beyond reason, Thursby lifted a heavy hand and stepped toward her. Simultaneously Butch sprang forward, seized the menacing fist and dragged it down and back, with a movement so swift and deft that its purpose was accomplished and the hand pinned to the small of Thursby's back actually before he appreciated what was happening. Even Joan was slow to comprehend the fact of this amazing intervention.... Nodding emphatically, "Beat it, kid," Butch counselled in a pleasant, unstrained tone--"beat it while the going's good.... Easy, now, guvner!" Speechless, Joan slipped out into the hall and slammed the door. Stumbling blindly in the murk, she was none the less quick to find the head of the stairway. On the ground floor, panting and sobbing, she paused to listen. There came from above no sound of pursuit to speed her on; yet on she went, out of the house, to scurry away through the midnight hush of the squalid street like a hunted thing. There was no sort of coherence in her thoughts, nothing but shreds and tatters of rage, fear, and despair, all clouded with a faint and vain regret. She gave no heed to the way she went: impulse controlled and blind instinct guided her. But at the corner of Park Avenue she was obliged to pause for breath, and took advantage of that pause to review her plight and plan her future. Her first concern must be to find a lodging for the night. Tomorrow could take care of itself.... Uttering a low cry of dismay, the girl clutched at the handbag swinging by its strap from her wrist: its latch was broken, its wide jaws yawned. In a breath she had grasped the empty substance of her most dire apprehensions: the slender fold of bills, handed her when she left the store for the last time that evening, was gone. Whether some sneak-thief had robbed her on a surface-car or in the Broadway rabble, or whether the lock had been broken, releasing its poor treasure, during her struggle with Austin on the stairs--or afterwards or before--she could not guess. But she was swift to recognize in its bitter fulness the heart-rending futility of retracing her steps to search for the vanished money--even though it was all that had stood between her and the world, between a common room with food for a week or two and starvation and--the streets. It was a fact, established and irrefutable in her understanding, that she could never go back.... Diligently exploring the bag, she brought to light a scanty store of small change: three quarters, a nickel, seven coppers--eighty-seven cents wherewith to face the world!