roofs in London; the winning profile of Paris; the fascination of Rome as viewed from Trinatà dei Monti; of Buda from across the Danube at Pest--those are not more startlingly dramatic than New York, especially when the chambers of the west are filled with the tremendous opal of a dying day, or when the lyric moonrise paves a path of silver across the hospitable sea we call our harbour. With all his ingrained hostility to America and things American (he despised the uncouth Bartholdi statue as an emblem of liberty, saying that its torch was in reality a threatening club: "Get to work," it commanded) he was forced to acknowledge the supremacy of New York. Two European cities only were more dramatic; Toledo, Prague. And during a summer sunrise the reverberations of our parent-planet, of that blazing white disk which made the sky a metallic blue, evokes Africa, rather than Italy; Enfin--the true firmament of North America. Easter and Mona, escorted by Paul and Ulick, entered. They were in high spirits. They surrounded Alfred, forcing him to drop his newspaper. The habitués were sipping coffee and playing chess. Some were celebrities. Alfred named them. One and all they stared at the singer. Several came over to the table and paid their way with extravagant compliments. She took all without a trace of the pose of the pampered prima-donna. It was her due. It was also in the day's work. When the others had gone, the party fell to arguing. A chance word of Ulick's had sent Easter up into the air. What! if women were such cowardly cows, the slaves of their husbands, and their dress-makers, the dupes of their lovers and children, was that sufficient reason why a level-headed woman should follow the call of these sheep! A woman should listen to her inward promptings. Easter said she didn't propose to be a shop-girl trying to live on the wage doled her by some self-advertising philanthropists--she gave a list that jarred Alfred's cynicism--those humbugs who drove thousands of girls into the ranks of prostitutes. Supposing, she continued, I had no voice, only my looks, what then! The stage, of course. What matters envious backbiting. A nun immured doesn't escape calumny. Hamlet knew. A girl who had an ounce of beauty or brains, practical brains, not moonshine rhapsody, can always make her way. Marry, forsooth! And beget a lot of brats for some cheap clerk, who stints her expenses! Pooh! Short-lived as is the good time of a cocotte despite her inevitable chance of poverty and disease, isn't her existence in a show-down about as useful, or as useless? That depends on the angle of moral incidence--or the chill, gray life of a servant, a factory worker, or the wife of a workman, with the horrors of frequent child-bearing, the hideous drunkenness, abuse and grinding poverty? Many a girl has remained virtuous because she was too plain to be tempted.