“This is the one,” the woman said, unlocking the next to last room from the back on the left. “All the rest are filled just now. Most of my lodgers never leave, only as they strike it rich----” “Do they often strike it rich?” “Oh, yes, dear. New York is quite the most magic place in America--something for every one who comes, if he only stays on.” They had crowded into the little room. “This is fine,” the girl said. “This is what I want. It’s just as I saw it.” “You get your water in the hall below,” the woman explained. “There is no gas plate, so you will have to bring your coffeepot down to my stove in the basement. The walls are ugly, but I’ll see that the cot is clean for you. If the wall of the next house across the area were only painted white, you would get more light.” The wall spoken of was less than three feet from the window sill. “What is the price?” the girl asked, with a cough before and after. “Twelve dollars a month.” “I will pay for a month now,” she said, with a small part of a big out-breath. “When did you come to New York?” the woman asked. “This morning.” “First time?” “Yes. From Los Angeles.” “And you have had four nights on the train?” “Six. It was a slow tourist train. I sat up from Chicago----” “Have you lived in Los Angeles long?” “Always--in and around.” “We don’t dare to think of Los Angeles much. To a lot of us here in New York, it’s a kind of heaven. Southern California--the sea and the mountains and the ten months of sunlight and the cool morning fogs and the ripe figs----” “I’ve wanted New York like that,” the girl said. “I’ve wanted New York so badly that I was afraid on the train that it wouldn’t stay until I got here----” “That’s the way to come,” the landlady said. “New York would wait for you. Oh, yes, New York waits for your kind. What are you going to do here?” “Write.” “Really?” The woman sat down on the edge of the cot. Her interest did not seem an affectation. Her figure was thin but lithe. One wouldn’t know in these shadows if she were nearer twenty-five or thirty-five. She seemed altogether without haste, smiling easily, but slow to laugh aloud. Her eyes looked startlingly knowing as she lit a cigarette--not natural somehow. At the same time in the matchlight her face had looked tired and weathered. Her way of speaking was like an English person, or one educated in England. “Do you mean stories?” she asked. “Yes, a book, a long story--set in eighteenth-century France.” “But you seem so young.” “I have written for a long time--always written.” “How old are you, please?” “Nineteen--but I have lived in a writing house always.” “Where is your house? I have been to Los Angeles.” “Back in a canyon near Santa Monica and my father is there now--in his slippers. He teaches every one how to write----” There was something baleful in the girl’s blue eyes, or perhaps it was exhaustion, as she smiled. “Does he write stories?” “No, metaphysics, but he knows everything----”