"I couldn't afford it." "Well, there's the parlor. It's only twelve, an'll be vacant to-morrow." "I'm afraid I'll have to get a place for to-night. Haven't you anything cheaper?" "You don't seem to know nothin' about prices, miss." The landlady appeared to reflect. "But there's the third-floor back hall-room," she added; "I can let you have it for seven, an' better than that you can't do anywheres." Mary hesitated. "You can easy make three times that much," the woman urged. "Do you----" Mary wet her dry lips. "Do you think so?" "Think so? Why, the lady that had that room for a whole year till last week made as high as twenty dollars a night. She moved out o' here to her own flat. But then, she was good-looking, of course." Mary had entertained some vague notion of a small gas-stove, and some saving in the matter of meals; but this the landlady could in no wise permit. "The insurance sharks won't allow it," she said, and concluded in a tone that showed the later fact to be of more importance: "Besides, it so runs up the gas-bills." Mary said no more. She paid for a week in advance, and was shown at once to the cell she had leased so dearly. It was a little, gaudily-papered room scarcely fifteen feet long and not much more than two-thirds that in width. A stationary washstand was so placed that the door could not open freely. At the single narrow window stood an unsteady table of no apparent purpose, and along the side a clothes-press and a narrow, pine bureau. The bed, however, was the chief feature of furniture, and that was large and comfortable. "I'll give you clean sheets every Sunday morning regular," said the landlady; "but any changes you want between you'll have to pay for the washin' of." She demanded, and received, twenty-five cents for a latch-key, added that she permitted no noise in the rooms, and departed, leaving Mary sitting on the edge of the bed. The girl's experiences in the house of Rose Légère had prepared her but imperfectly for this adventure. It was a new business, and Mary did not know how to embark upon it. She was as lost as the chorus-girl, unused to the purchase of railway tickets and the engaging of "hotel-accommodations," who finds herself stranded in a small town. She went to the bureau and looked at herself in its distorting mirror, in an effort to appraise her wares. Her hollow cheeks needed rouge. Her dull eyes needed belladonna. Her clothes were worn. She felt that she should start work immediately, but she was afraid. She went to bed and slept.