Then suddenly she found that her heart was beating thickly. She was passing Fanny's corner, timidly looking away from it, magnetically drawn to it; the pavement seemed somehow alive under her feet.... She longed yet feared to meet Fanny; Fanny wrapped to her sea-blue eyes in her scented furs, Fanny young and beautiful, Fanny who knew neither cold nor hunger, nor about being unwanted. Fanny's desirability, though it brought no images with it, sent the blood pounding up darkly to her face.... But she was white again as she passed the Hotel Erzherzog Johann, remembering with a sudden stab how she had always driven there in a drosky when she came to Vienna from Baden for a day's shopping, and how pleasant that great, laughing, singing city had seemed. Now the iridescence had gone out of it. It was drab where once it had gleamed with a thousand vivid tints; beggarly where it had dispensed with a lavish unconcern. She had been in the habit of taking her dinner at the Erzherzog Johann's, the proprietor had been a friend of her husband's. The old head waiter would always greet her warmly as a friend of the house he had served so long, and he would recommend a quarter of a roast chicken, the wing and breast, of course, and tell her how the noodles had been made fresh in the hotel that very morning, and then wind up by singing the merits of a Linzer or Sacher tart. She'd leave her bundles there and come back at four o'clock for her coffee with whipped cream, and he'd cut her a slice of the fresh gugelhupf. Such happy days. She hadn't really had the slightest idea how happy they were; she thought how she had often worried about the stupidest things. She became conscious of an increasing sadness as she passed on down the street, realizing miserably how little human beings make of their actual blessings, whatever they may be, and she found herself sending up a prayer to be trusted with a little happiness,--just once more. She thought how never, never again, should they miraculously be hers, would she take as rightful dues her three meals a day, her comfortable bed, her clothes befitting the seasons, but that always, up from her heart would well thanks to the mysterious Giver or Withholder of these things. She felt a little faint as she hurried past the delicatessen shop on the corner. There wasn't much in the windows; food wasn't kept in windows in those days, but inside there would doubtless be a maddening smell of cheese and sausage. A one-legged young man, his leg gone to the thigh, in a tattered combination of military and civil coverings, stood always on that corner selling his miserable shoe laces....