It was impossible not to feel lonely, when Lily had gone: in three and a half years they had been much together. For a while Sylvia tried to content herself with the company of the girls in the _pension d'artistes_, to which she had been forced to go because the flat was too expensive for her to live in now. Her illness had swallowed up any money she had saved, and the manager took advantage of it to lower her salary. When she protested the manager told her he would be willing to pay the original salary, if she would go to São Paulo. Though Sylvia understood that the management was trying to get the best of a bargain, she was too listless to care much and she agreed to go. The voyage there was like a nightmare. The boat was full of gaudy negroes who sang endlessly their mysterious songs; the smell was vile; the food was worse; cockroaches swarmed. São Paulo was a squalid reproduction of Rio de Janeiro, and the women who sang in the cabaret were all seamed with ten years' longer vagabondage than those at Rio. The men of São Paulo treated them with the insolence of the half-breeds they all seemed. On the third night a big man with teeth like an ancient fence and a diamond in his shirt-front like a crystal stopper leaned over from a box and shouted to Sylvia to come up and join him when she had finished her songs; he said other things that made her shake with anger. When she left the scene, the grand pimp, who was politely known as the manager, congratulated Sylvia upon her luck: she had caught the fancy of the richest patron. "You don't suppose I'm going to see that _goujat_ in his box?" she growled. The grand pimp was in despair. Did she wish to drive away their richest patron? He would probably open a dozen bottles of champagne. He might ... the grand pimp waved his arms to express mental inability to express all the splendors within her grasp. Presently the impatient suitor came behind the scene to know the reason of Sylvia's delay. He grasped her by the wrist and tried to drag her up to his box. She seized the only weapon in reach--a hand-glass--and smashed it against his face. The suitor roared; the grand pimp squealed; Sylvia escaped to the stage, which was almost flush with the main dancing-hall. She forced her way through the orchestra, kicking the instruments right and left, and fell into the arms of a man more resplendent than the rest, but a _rastaquouère_ of more Parisian cut, who in a dago-American accent promised to plug the first guy that tried to touch her.