“Dear me! is this a Hundred and Seventy-second?” “Thass wat I said, didn't I?” She evicted herself with a manner of apology for intruding on the conductor's attention. Now Kedzie was alone with the man. His coyote bark changed to an insinuating murmur. He sat down near Kedzie, took up an abandoned evening paper, and said: “Goin' all the way, Cutie, or how about it?” “I'm get'n' off here!” said Kedzie, with royal scorn. She resented his familiarity, and she was afraid that he was going to prove dangerous. Perhaps he meant to abduct her in this chariot. Being a street-car conductor, the poor fellow neither understood women nor was understood by them. He accepted Kedzie's blow with resignation. He helped her down the step, his hand mellowing her arm and finding it ripe. She flung him a rebukeful glare that he did not get. He gave the two bells, and the car went away like a big lamp, leaving the world to darkness and to Kedzie. She walked for a block or two and wondered where she should sleep. There were no hotels up here, and she would have been afraid of their prices. Probably they all charged as much as the Biltmore. At that rate, her money would just about pay for the privilege of walking in and out again. Boarding-houses there might have been, but they bore no distinguishing marks. Kedzie stood and strolled until she was completely fagged. Then she encountered a huge mass of shadowy foliage, a park--Crotona Park, although of course Kedzie did not know its name. There were benches at the edge, and concreted paths went glimmering among vagueness of foliage, with here and there searing arc-lights as bright as immediate moons. Kedzie dropped to the first bench, but a couple of lovers next to her protested, and she retreated into the park a little. She felt a trifle chilled with weariness and discouragement and the lack of light. She clasped her arms together as a kind of wrap and huddled herself close to herself. Her head teetered and tottered and gradually sank till her delicate chin rested in her delicate bosom. Her big hat shaded her face as in a deep blot of ink, and she slept. Unprotected, pretty, alone in the wicked city, she slept secure and unassailed. CHAPTER XI Miss Anita Adair (_nee_ Kedzie Thropp) had dozed upon her cozy park bench for an uncertain while when her bedroom was invaded by visitors who did not know she was there. Kedzie was wakened by murmurous voices. A man was talking to a woman. They might have been Romeo and Juliet in Verona for the poetry of their grief, but they were in the Bronx Borough, and he was valet and she a housemaid, or so Kedzie judged. The man was saying in a dialect new to Kedzie: “Ah, _ma pauvre p'tite amie,_ for why you have a _jalousie_ of my _patrie_?”