I saw him fumble for his pocket-book and look at me strangely. His burning gaze seemed to strip me naked—pierce me through and through from head to foot. Something hurt so deep I choked with shame. I seized my hat and coat and ran out.
It was getting dark when I reached the entrance of Central Park. Exhausted, I dropped to the nearest bench. I didn’t even know I was crying.
“Are you lonely, little one?” A hand slipped around my waist and a dapper young chap moved closer. “Are you lonely?” he repeated.
I let him talk. I knew he had nothing real to offer, but I was so tired, so ready to drop the burden of my weary body that I had no resistance in me. “There’s no place for me,” I thought to myself. “Everyone shuts me out. What difference what becomes of me? Who cares?”
My head dropped to his shoulder. And the cry broke from me, “I have no place to sleep to-night.”
“Sleep?” I could feel him draw in his breath and a blood-shot gleam leaped into his eyes. “You should worry. I’ll take care of that.”
He flashed a roll of bills tauntingly. “How about it, kiddo? Can you change me a twenty-dollar bill?”
As his other hand reached for me, I wrenched loose from him as from the cloying touch of pitch. “I wish I were that kind! I wish I were your kind! But I’m not!”
His hands dropped from the touch of me as though his flesh was scorched, and I found I was alone.
I walked again. At the nearest public telephone office I called up the women’s hotels. None had a room left for less than two dollars. My remaining cash was forty cents short. The Better Housing Bureau had robbed me of my last hope of shelter.