He raised his find to his face and then thrust it into his pocket and resumed his shuffle down the alley. “To think,” mused Moisse, “of a man eating out of a garbage can. Either he is inordinately hungry or careless to a point of ... of....” He searched for a word that refused to appear and he followed slowly after the man. In the dim light of a side street the man paused and took out his booty. It was evidently the back of a fowl. Standing still the man thrust it into his mouth, gnawing and tearing at its bones. After he had eaten for several minutes he held it up to the light and started picking at shreds of meat with his fingers. These he licked off his hand. The meal was at length finished. The man threw the gleaned bones away, blew his nose and walked on. Through the dark tumbled streets Moisse followed. The shuffling figure fascinated him. He noted the gradually increasing degradation of the neighborhood, the hovels that seemed like torn, blackened rags, the broken streets piled with refuse and mud. In front of a lighted house the man stopped. The curtains which hung over the two front windows of the house were torn. One of them was half destroyed and Moisse saw into the room in which a gas jet flickered and which was empty. The man walked up the steps and knocked at the door. It was opened. “A woman,” whispered Moisse. She vanished, and the man followed her. The two appeared in a moment in the room with the gas light. The woman was tall and thin, her hair hung down her back in two scimpy braids. Her face was coated with paint and great hollows loomed under her eyes. The man walked to her, his open mouth widened in a grin. “They’re talking,” murmured the young dramatist as he watched their haggard faces move strangely. He noted the woman was dressed in a wrapper, colorless and streaked. “I wonder—” he began, but the scene captured his attention. He watched absorbed. The woman was shaking her head and backing away from the man who finally halted in the center of the room. He lifted a foot from the floor and removed its shoe. Standing with the shoe in his hand his eyes glistened at the woman who watched him with her neck stretched forward and a sneer on her lips. The man put his hand in the shoe and brought out a coin. “A twenty-five cent piece,” muttered Moisse. The man held it up in his fingers and laughed. His face distorted itself into strange wrinkles when he laughed. Moisse who could not hear the laugh saw only an imbecilic grimace. The woman took the coin, and left the room. She returned in a moment holding out her arms to the man. He seized her, crushing her body against him until she was bent backward. He pressed his face over her, his mouth still open, his eyes staring. The woman stared back and laughed, fastening her lips suddenly to his. Losing his balance, the man staggered and the woman broke from his grasp. He pounced on her, seizing her hand and jerking her against him.