“What is your name?” “Musser--Pidge Musser. Not Pidge, really. Pandora is my name, but every one calls me Pidge. My father started it.” “Is his name Adolph Musser?” In the dimness, the girl’s face looked like a blur of white; a little stretched, too, it appeared just now. “Yes, that’s his name,” she said in a hopeless tone. “So you know him, too?” “I heard him lecture once.” “I suppose you ‘fell for’ him? They all do.” The woman’s black eyes twinkled. “The lecture was on cosmic consciousness,” she said. “I remember distinctly that Mr. Musser outlined four paths of approach.” “Yes, the mystical, the occult, the mathematical, and the artistic. Did he talk in bare feet?” “Yes, and an Eastern robe.” “That was a camel driver’s robe,” said the girl. “Oh, I didn’t think I’d hear of him here.” “You won’t. May I call you Pidge?” “Yes, what you like. My father names everything.” “It sounds better than Pandora--at least, to me.... I must go down now. A little breakfast party is waiting there. Take off your things. I’ll come back soon. I am Miss Claes and I want to come back already.” Pidge Musser sat almost in the center of her room, but not quite. At least, she sat in the center of the stiff little cot. She could touch two of the walls. The third was across the narrow aisle from the cot. The fourth was the windowed one, which looked as if it were about to be bricked up entirely. That was quite a distance. Her room. She was alone. She looked at the door, arose, brought in the key and turned it from the inside. Alone, and this was New York. She could live a month anyway, and write and write on _The Lance of the Rivernais_. She could be herself and not be told how to live and love and write and bathe and breathe, and change her polarity and promote her spirit and govern her temper and appetites, by a man who was governed by anything but himself. New York. She had hardly dared to look at it on the way from the train to Washington Square, where the street car had put her down. She had come to Washington Square because one of the boys who studied with her father had said it was the best place to live in all the big town--the cheapest and friendliest and quietest.... It appeared all true, but Miss Claes wasn’t like a rooming-house landlady; quite different, in fact, and astonishing. “I could hear her talk about New York, forever,” Pidge said half aloud, and this was a remark of considerable force from one who had known the maiming of many words. Presently she would go out and look at New York again; walk about a bit, keeping a mental string tied to this green house. Besides she had to rent a typewriter, but there was no rush. It was delicious sitting here alone in the gloom of midday, making the place her own, locked in--a chance at last to take a look at herself and see what she was made of and think of what she was here for.