"Because you can't," cried Laura hotly; "you've never felt as I have."
"How do you know?" demanded the other, with an elevation of her eyebrows.
Laura made a gesture of impatience.
"Oh, what's the use of explaining?" she cried.
Her visitor looked at her for a moment without making reply. Then, with the serious, reproachful manner of a mother reproving a wayward child, she said:
"You know, Laura, I'm not much on giving advice, but you make me sick. I thought you'd grown wise. A young girl just butting into this business might possibly make a fool of herself, but you ought to be onto the game, and make the best of it."
Laura was fast losing her temper. Her eyes flashed, and her hands worked nervously. Angrily, she exclaimed:
"If you came up here, Elfie, to talk that sort of stuff to me, please don't. Out West this summer, I met some one, a real man, who did me a lot of good. You know him. You introduced him to me that night at the restaurant. Well, we met again in Denver. I learned to love him. He opened my eyes to a different way of going along. He's a man who—oh, well, what's the use! You don't know—you don't know."
She tossed her head disdainfully as if the matter was not worthy of further discussion, and sank down on the bed. Elfie, who had listened attentively, removed the cigarette from her mouth, and threw it into the fireplace. Scornfully, she said:
"I don't know, don't I? I don't know, I suppose, then, when I came to this town from up-State—a little burg named Oswego—and joined a chorus, that I didn't fall in love with just such a man. I suppose I don't know that then I was the best-looking girl in New York, and everybody talked about me? I suppose I don't know that there were men, all ages, and with all kinds of money, ready to give me anything for the mere privilege of taking me out to supper? And I didn't do it, did I? For three years I stuck by this good man, who was to lead me in a good way, toward a good life. And all the time I was getting older, never quite so pretty one day as I had been the day before. I never knew then what it was to be tinkered with by hairdressers and manicures, or a hundred and one of those other people who make you look good. I didn't have to have them then." Rising, she went up to the table and faced her companion. "Well, you know, Laura, what happened."