"Well, you would care, all right, all right. You can't go home, and you've no clothes and no money and no references. You couldn't get work anywhere in New York, and you couldn't get away from New York."
"I——" Mary groped through the darkness of her soul. "I can do housework."
"Not without a reference you can't."
"I could go to some office——"
"If you went to any charity-joint, they'd throw you out because of what's happened to you."
"I could beg on the street if I had to."
"Do you think the men in this town give money for nothing to a good-looking girl? You could go on the street, that's what you could do."
The phrase was new to its hearer, but the tone explained it.
"Then," she stumbled forward, "I could go to the police. They'd help me. I could——"
But at that word Rose flew into a torrent of anger and abuse that dwarfed the former tempest.