She earned her money. She threaded needles and took stitches. She powdered the backs of necks. She supplied towels for soapy, dripping hands. She removed a speck from a teary blue eye and pounded the heel on a slipper. She curled the straggling ends of a black bob and a gray bob, pinned a velvet flower on a lithe round waist, mixed three doses of bicarbonate of soda, took charge of a shed pink-satin girdle, collected, on hands and knees, several dozen fake pearls that had wept from a broken string. She served chorus girls and schoolgirls, gay young matrons and gayer young mistresses, a lady who had divorced four husbands, and a lady who had poisoned one, the secret (more or less) sweetheart of a Most Distinguished Name, and the Brains of a bootleg gang.... She saw things. She saw a yellow check, with the ink hardly dry. She saw four tiny bruises, such as fingers might make, on an arm. She saw a girl strike another girl, not playfully. She saw a bundle of letters some man wished he had not written, safe and deep in a brocaded handbag. * * * * * About midnight the door flew open and at once was pushed shut, and a gray-eyed, lovely child stood backed against it, her palms flattened on the panels at her sides, the draperies of her white chiffon gown settling lightly to rest around her. There were already five damsels of varying ages in the dressing room. The latest arrival marked their presence with a flick of her eyes and, standing just where she was, she called peremptorily, “Maid!” Mrs. Brady, standing just where _she_ was, said, “Yes, miss?” “Please come here,” said the girl. Mrs. Brady, as slowly as she dared, did so. The girl lowered her voice to a tense half-whisper. “Listen! Is there any way I can get out of here except through this door I came in?” Mrs. Brady stared at her stupidly. “Any window?” persisted the girl. “Or anything?” Here they were interrupted by the exodus of two of the damsels-of-varying ages. Mrs. Brady opened the door for them--and in so doing caught a glimpse of a man who waited in the hall outside, a debonair, old-young man with a girl’s furry wrap hung over his arm, and his hat in his hand. The door clicked. The gray-eyed girl moved out from the wall, against which she had flattened herself--for all the world like one eluding pursuit in a cinema. “What about that window?” she demanded, pointing. “That’s all the farther it opens,” said Mrs. Brady. “Oh! And it’s the only one--isn’t it?” “It is.” “Damn,” said the girl. “Then there’s _no_ way out?” “No way but the door,” said Mrs. Brady testily. The girl looked at the door. She seemed to look _through_ the door, and to despise and to fear what she saw. Then she looked at Mrs. Brady. “Well,” she said, “then I s’pose the only thing to do is to stay in here.”