"I shall never sing Elsa--never--never! Lehmann is Elsa. But what does it matter? By the time I reach grand opera I shall have dinners--real dinners--with napkins the size of a sheet and vegetables of curious kinds. Then I'll grow fat and become famous. I may even sing Isolde." She broke into a regretful little sigh. "And Alvary will be too old to be my Tristan." At the corner of Twenty-third Street she took a cross-town car. It was crowded, and, with half-suppressed disgust, she rested the tips of her fingers upon a leather strap. The gloves covering the fingers were worn and badly mended, but the touch was delicate. Something graceful and feminine and fragile in her unsteady figure caused half a dozen men to rise hastily, and she accepted a proffered seat with the merest inclination of her head. With an involuntary coquetry she perceived that, as the newest feminine arrival, she was being stealthily regarded from behind the wall of newspapers skirting the opposite seat. She raised her hand to her loosened hair, half frowned, and glanced at the floor with demure indifference. Beside her sat an Irishwoman with a heavy basket and a black bruise upon her temple. The girl looked at the woman and the bruise with an expression of repugnance. The repugnance was succeeded by a tidal wave of self-commiseration. She pitied herself that she was forced to make use of public means of conveyance. The onions in the Irishwoman's basket offended her nostrils. Her gaze returned to her lap. As daintily as she had withdrawn her person from contact with the woman beside her, she withdrew her finely strung senses from contact with the odor of onions and the closeness of the humanity hemming her in. She sat in disdainful self-absorption. Her sensitive features became impassive, her head drooped, the green in her eyes faded into gray, and the lashes obscured them. The shadow of her heavy hair rested like a veil upon her face. When the car reached Ninth Avenue she got out, walked to Thirtieth Street, and crossed westward. Facing her stood the immense and unpicturesque apartment-house known as "The Gotham"--a monument of human Philistinism and brownstone-finished effrontery. She entered and passed through the unventilated hall to the restaurant at the rear. As she crossed the threshold, a man seated at one of the larger tables looked up. "My dear girl," he said, reproachfully, "lateness for dinner at The Gotham entails serious consequences. We were just planning a search-party." His right-hand neighbor spoke warningly. "Don't believe him, Miss Musin; he refused to get uneasy until he had finished his dinner." "When one is empty," retorted the first, "one can't get even uneasy. Anxiety can't be produced from a void."