"Have you had enough to eat?" he asked.
"It'll do," she responded.
They turned into a side street and moved away from the shimmering lights and the morass of people. Presently they entered a dingy frame house and went upstairs. There was no one in the hall, no furniture, only a flickering gas-light. She unlocked a door. "Come in."
He looked at her again. She took off her hat and arranged her dark hair so that it looped almost over one eye. Hugo wondered at her silence. "I didn't mean to rush," he said.
"Well, I did. Gotta make some more. It'll be"—she hesitated—"two bucks."
The girl sat down and wept. "Aw, hell," she said finally, looking at him with a shameless defiance, "I guess I'm gonna make a rotten tart. I was in a show, an' I got busted out for not bein' nice to the manager. I says to myself: 'Well, what am I gonna do?' An' I starts to get hungry this morning. So I says to myself: 'Well, there ain't but one thing to do, Charlotte, but to get you a room,' I says, an' here I am, so help me God."
She removed her dress with a sweeping motion. Hugo looked at her, filled with pity, filled with remorse at his sudden surrender to her passionate good looks, intensely discomfited.
"Listen. I have a roll in my pocket. I'm damn glad I came here first. I haven't got a job, but I'll get one in the morning. And I'll get you a decent room and stake you till you get work. God knows, I picked you up for what I thought you were, Charlotte, and God knows too that I haven't any noble nature. But I'm not going to let you go on the street simply because you're broke. Not when you hate it so much."
Charlotte shut her eyes tight and pressed out the last tears, which ran into her rouge and streaked it with mascara. "That's sure white of you."
"I don't know. Maybe it's selfish. I had an awful yen for you when I sat down at that table. But let's not worry about it now. Let's go out and get a decent dinner."