Solid New York! Solid New York relieved her burden of no base. She had visited New York before: she felt the City deep, having in that past surface of her life beheld its surface. She sensed an analogue. She too had not changed but had gone down below her surface to a turmoiled depth. Within still deeper was there not a quiet, as now she sensed the Quiet of the City under its torrential streets and its human million midges of fire through stone? Thus New York welcomed her: it was a place where people dwelt and had dwelt long, so she could feel it was a place where people dwelt. Her Southern City, ... almost as old, was dead where old, was raw and unaccustomed where it was new ... its industrial heart of smoke, its outskirts of prim bungalows. Here was a City _one_: the place she knew for such as she to come to. --Such as I? Loving New York so sudden above the agony of her intimate deprivals, she said: “We are something in common, you and I.” She and the wide solid City that untouched her frail and bloody inwardness ... lifting her up to a light where she could seek what this thing meant, this I. In the Office was Clara Lonergan. When she spoke to persons, particularly when she spoke to Clara, Fanny lost her quiet City: New York became a pullulent pile, a heaving surface above a boil of blood. So Fanny did not seek out persons, she feared that City.--Do I not need to seek myself? She feared the self that was like it. But Clara, she knew at once, she was not to avoid. She saw in a glance that she was supposed to remove her hat. She took a seat demurely, her heart compressed and moving up and down as she breathed fragilely. She felt how all within her was fragile and was surrounded by a solid world. Miss Lonergan smiled: “I guess Mr. Johns will see about you pretty soon,” and went into his Office. Her smile alone of the outside world also was fragile. So Fanny sat demurely. Beyond her was a long dark room filling with girls. She heard their footfalls in the hall: at times through the wired glass of the door she caught faces ... face sallow hungry, face angrily uplifted toward sun and laughter by the means of rouge, face resigned in sweet debility.... That one will marry. As feet cadenced the hard cement Fanny’s heart fluttered. The door swung; voices angled against the feet and the door, escaping in this brief interim of home and work in allusive herd-calls: Fanny felt thrust away. Each voice and footfall thrust her. She struggled to be back. --I am of you, now, she argued to herself. A little older than most. O in life so older!... But I am one of you now. The door opening from the private Office called her sharp up. Miss Lonergan came in, seated herself with fingers already rustling at her pad. Mr. Johns loomed before her. “Good morning. Good morning.”