“What’s a girl who’s poor to do to feed herself? Not but what the men’ll feed her--if she’s a fool! A man goes and marries, and gets a girl baby. And does he have that girl baby taught a trade when she leaves grammar school, like he does his sons? He does, like hell! He throws her out--in front of men--to catch a husband! ’Tisn’t fair to the girls. Look at me: I didn’t know how to do a thing except dance. I’d learned how to do that on the sidewalks, to hurdy-gurdies.” The noise of the rain on the roof deadened her voice, so that the men had to lean across the table in order to hear her next words. “I said I’d tell you a few things. All right! I will! It may help you in your bets on other women.” Her voice became shriller, more filled with excitement. The rain no longer deadened it; it was charged with an electricity that carried it above the storm. “When I knew that if I didn’t want to marry one of the poor simps I met--with his hair slicked down with grease till it looked like shiny black shoes--I’d have to scratch for my living, I got busy and hunted a job in a cheap dance hall in that part of town. My job was to dance with any dirty, smelly man who came in and hadn’t got a girl along. Not much of a trade, but it was a long sight better than the one my sister took up--on the streets! That was another trade you didn’t have to be trained for! “‘Mary, be careful!’ my mother kept telling me. ‘A girl has got to be careful--because the men won’t be careful for her.’ “By the time I’d learned the game of taking care of myself, I’d worked up to a sweller dance hall on Broadway. The fellows who came in there were clean, except in their minds. But I kept saying to myself: ‘Mary, be careful!’ “And then, one evening, in came a seedy-looking man who made you think he’d seen better times and a fatter living. Always shaved clean, and smelled of talcum powder. But his clothes were brushed until there wasn’t a bit of nap left on them, I used to think when I was dancing with him and looking at his shoulder. He was an actor, out of a job, he told me. They tell you the story of their lives when they’re dancing with you. “Once he came in downright hungry. I shared with him that night the dinner the management gave me. “I got in the habit of looking for him, and sharing my dinner with him. I respected myself a lot because I was giving him dinner instead of him feeding me. Silly, wasn’t it?” She looked at Kirwin. Kirwin nodded gravely. “I understand that perfectly,” he said. “You would feel that way. So should I, in your place.”