“I must get up to Fifth Avenue somehow,” she declared. “I can't walk and I haven't a nickel.”
He pushed the brooch back to her and threw a dime upon the counter.
“Well,” he said, “you don't look fit to walk, and that's a fact, but the brooch isn't worth entering up. There's a dime for you. Now git, please, I'm busy.”
Beatrice clutched the coin and, almost forgetting to thank him, found her way up the iron stairs on to the platform of the elevated. Soon she was seated in the train, rattling and shaking on its way through the slums into the heart of the wonderful city. There was only one thing left for her to try, a thing which she had had in her mind for days. Yet she found herself, even now she was committed to it, thinking of what lay before her with something like black horror. It was her last resource, indeed. Strong though she was, she knew by many small signs that her strength was almost at an end. The days and weeks of disappointments, the long fruitless trudges from office to office, the heart-sickness of constant refusals, poor food, the long fasts, had all told their tale. She was attractive enough still. Her pallor seemed to have given her a wonderful delicacy. The curve of her lips and the soft light in her gray eyes, were still as potent as ever. When she thought, though, what a poor asset her appearance had been, the color flamed in her cheeks.
In Broadway she made her way to a very magnificent block of buildings, and passing inside took the lift to the seventh floor. Here she got out and knocked timidly at a glass-paneled door, on which was inscribed the name of Mr. Anthony Cruxhall. A very superior young man bade her enter and inquired her business.
“I wish to see Mr. Cruxhall for a moment, privately,” she said. “I shall not detain him for more than a minute. My name is Franklin—Miss Beatrice Franklin.”
The young man's lips seemed about to shape themselves into a whistle, but something in the girl's face made him change his mind.
“I guess the boss is in,” he admitted. “He's just got back from a big meeting, but I am not sure about his seeing any one to-day. However, I'll tell him that you're here.”
He disappeared into an inner room. Presently he came out again and held the door open.
“Will you walk right in, Miss Franklin?” he invited.