"Well--two, then." She gave a reckless laugh. "God, how cold it is! Anybody'd go to hell to get warm a night like this." "You are a very pretty girl," said the man. He was warmly dressed; his was not the thin blood of poverty. He could not have appreciated what she was feeling. "You're sure you want to go? You're sure it's your--your business?" "Yes. I'm strange in this part of town. Do you know a place?" An hour later Etta went into the appointed restaurant. Her eyes searched anxiously for Susan, but did not find her. She inquired at the counter. No one had asked there for a young lady. This both relieved her and increased her nervousness; Susan had not come and gone--but would she come? Etta was so hungry that she could hold out no longer. She sat at a table near the door and took up the large sheet on which was printed the bill of fare. She was almost alone in the place, as it was between dinner and supper. She read the bill thoroughly, then ordered black bean soup, a sirloin steak and German fried potatoes. This, she had calculated, would cost altogether a dollar; undoubtedly an extravagance, but everything at that restaurant seemed dear in comparison with the prices to which she had been used, and she felt horribly empty. She ordered the soup, to stay her while the steak was broiling. As soon as the waiter set down bread and butter she began upon it greedily. As the soup came, in walked Susan--calm and self-possessed, Etta saw at first glance. "I've been so frightened. You'll have a plate of soup?" asked Etta, trying to look and speak in unconcerned fashion. "No, thank you," replied Susan, seating herself opposite. "There's a steak coming--a good-sized one, the waiter said it'd be." "Very well." Susan spoke indifferently. "Aren't you hungry?" "I don't know. I'll see." Susan was gazing straight ahead. Her eyes were distinctly gray--gray and as hard as Susan Lenox's eyes could be. "What're you thinking about?" "I don't know," she laughed queerly. "Was--it--dreadful?" A pause, then: "Nothing is going to be dreadful to me any more. It's all in the game, as Mr. Burlingham used to say." "Burlingham--who's he?" It was Etta's first faint clew toward that mysterious past of Susan's into which she longed to peer. "Oh--a man I knew. He's dead." A long pause, Etta watching Susan's unreadable face. At last she said: "You don't seem a bit excited." Susan came back to the present. "Don't I? Your soup's getting cold." Etta ate several spoonfuls, then said with an embarrassed attempt at a laugh, "I--I went, too." Susan slowly turned upon Etta her gaze--the gaze of eyes softening, becoming violet. Etta's eyes dropped and the color flooded into her fair skin. "He was an old man--forty or maybe fifty," she explained nervously. "He gave me two dollars. I nearly didn't get him. I lost my nerve and told him I was good and was only starting because I needed money."