«Everything,» he answered, almost savagely. «Why don't you entertain your company in the house where you live? Is it necessary to pick up Tom, Dick and Harry on the streets?»
She kept her absolutely ingenuous eyes upon his. «If you could see the place where I live you wouldn't ask that. I live in Brickdust Row. They call it that because there's red dust from the bricks crumbling over everything. I've lived there for more than four years. There's no place to receive company. You can't have anybody come to your room. What else is there to do? A girl has got to meet the men, hasn't she?»
«Yes,» he said, hoarsely. «A girl has got to meet a—has got to meet the men.»
«The first time one spoke to me on the street,» she continued, «I ran home and cried all night. But you get used to it. I meet a good many nice fellows at church. I go on rainy days and stand in the vestibule until one comes up with an umbrella. I wish there was a parlor, so I could ask you to call, Mr. Blinker—are you really sure it isn't 'Smith,' now?»
The boat landed safely. Blinker had a confused impression of walking with the girl through quiet crosstown streets until she stopped at a corner and held out her hand.
«I live just one more block over,» she said. «Thank you for a very pleasant afternoon.»
Blinker muttered something and plunged northward till he found a cab. A big, gray church loomed slowly at his right. Blinker shook his fist at it through the window.
«I gave you a thousand dollars last, week,» he cried under his breath, «and she meets them in your very doors. There is something wrong; there is something wrong.»
At eleven the next day Blinker signed his name thirty times with a new pen provided by Lawyer Oldport.
«Now let me go to the woods,» he said surlily.