"What's the matter?"
Again her eyelids fluttered sideways, and she stammered:
"Not'ing. The beautiful evening—that's why!"
That a woman of what he now clearly saw to be "a certain type" should perceive what he himself had just been perceiving, struck him forcibly, and he said:
"Cheer up."
She looked up again swiftly: "Cheer up! You are not lonelee like me."
For one of that sort, she looked somehow honest; her tear-streaked face was rather pretty, and he murmured:
"Well, let's walk a bit, and talk it over."
They turned the corner, and walked east, along streets empty, and beautiful, with their dulled orange-glowing lamps, and here and there the glint of some blue or violet light. He found it queer and rather exciting—for an adventure of just this kind he had never had. And he said doubtfully:
"How did you get into this? Isn't it an awfully hopeless sort of life?"