I think I remarked, in reply, that things did look rather dull. In the meantime I glanced in at her little room. There was a chair or two, a cheap oak dresser, and an iron bed. The room looked neat.
"Ain't I got a nice clean place?" suggested Madam Leo. Then as I assented, she pointed to a calendar which hung upon the wall. At the top of it was a colored print from some French painting, showing a Cupid kissing a filmily draped Psyche.
"That's me," said Madam Leo. "That's me when I was a young girl!" Again she loosed her laugh.
I started to move on.
"Where are you from?" she asked.
"I came up from Colorado Springs," I said.
"Well," she returned, "when you go back send some nice boys up here. Tell them to see Madam Leo. Tell them a middle-aged woman with spectacles. I'm known here. I been here four years. Oh, things ain't so bad. I manage to make two or three dollars a day."
As I passed to leeward of her on the narrow walk I got the smell of a strong, brutal perfume.
"Have you got to be going?" she asked.
"Yes," I answered. "I must go to the train."