"Swell, and then some. Who you got to thank? Who steered you right?" Like a pale-gold aura of moonlight spreading out from behind a black cloud sprang Della's hair against the drooping brim of her hat. She was like a tight-draped, firm-stayed Venus, lyric in every line, her limbs wrapped in an ephod of grace and a skirt that restricted her steps like anklets joined by a too short chain. "Here, put them white gloves in your bag and save 'em for outside the office doors. Ready?" "Oh, Ysobel, if my little sister Cottie could only see me now!" "Don't forget the lines I learnt you last night--two years' experience on Western short circuit--spot-light work, and silent principal--thirty dollars." "Western short circuit--Western short circuit!" "Dancing and first-row promenade specialty." "Dancing and first--" "Say, you ain't unlearnt it already, have you?" "No--no." Down four flights of narrow, unlit stairs with their gauzy laughter, lingering in black hall corners, and then out into a sunlit morning. At the end of the tall-walled block, lined on both sides with brownstone, straight-front phalanxes of rooming-houses, a segment of Broadway, flashing with automobiles, darting pedestrians, white-facaded buildings, and sun-reflecting windows, flowed like a mountain stream in spring. "Gee--Ysobel, look at that jam, will you!" "Well, whatta you know! There goes Vance Dudley! If you want to know what kind of work I do, ask Vance. Me and him did a duet solo in a two-a-day musical sketch that would have landed us on Broadway sure if the lead hadn't put in his lady friend when she came in off the road, flat. I'll show you my notices sometime. That act was good enough for a Hy Myers house if it had been worked right." "I bet you're grand, Ysobel--your cute little feet and all." "Ask any of 'em around the offices about me. I could soft-shoe Clarice off the 'Winter Revue' this minute if--if I wasn't what they call in the profesh a--a tin saint. I kinda got my ideas about things--" "About what, Ysobel?" "None of them ingenoo lines again, girl. Leave it to you merry widows to take care of yourselves every time. There's nothin' I can learn a merry widow. A merry widow can make Methuselah, herself, feel like a squab when it comes to bein' wise." "Honest--" "That baby stare ain't the kind of a cue to throw me, girl. I can steer you up as far as the offices, but I'm done after you once get past the office boy." "I--I don't--" "After she gets past the ground-glass door every girl in the business has got to decide for herself. I decided myself, and look where I got to! Nine years in the business and never creaked a Broadway board yet. I ain't got the looks to get there on my own stuff--and what happens? I wake up dead some day doin' short circuit in a Kansas tank-town. I'll be doin' thirty-a-week, West-of-the-Mississippi stuff to the bitter end because--because I decided _my_ way and selected the rocky lane." "The rocky lane?"