Annan nodded, glanced out over the waste of withered grass. As he stepped from the asphalt to the meadow a tepid breeze began to blow, cooling his perspiring cheeks.
A few sleepers stirred feverishly. Under a wilted shrub a girl lifted her heavy head from the satchel that had pillowed it. Then, slowly, she sat upright to face the faint stir of air.
Her hat fell off. She passed slim fingers through her bobbed hair, ruffling it to the cool wind blowing.
Annan walked directly toward her, picking his way across the grass among the sleeping heaps of people.
As he stopped beside her, Eris looked up at him out of tired eyes which seemed like wells of shadow, giving her pinched face an appearance almost skull-like.
Annan mistook her age, as did everybody; and he calmly squatted down on his haunches as though condescending to a child.
“Don’t be afraid to talk to me,” he said in his easy, persuasive way. “I write stories for newspapers. I’m looking for a story now. If you’ll tell me your story I’ll give you ten dollars.”
Eris stared at him without comprehension. The increasing breeze blew her mop of chestnut curls upward from a brow as white as milk.
“Come,” he said in his pleasant voice, “there are ten perfectly good dollars in it for you. All I want of you is your story—not your real name, of course,—just a few plain facts explaining how you happen to be sleeping here in Central Park with your little satchel for your pillow and the sky for your bed-clothes.”
Eris remained motionless, one slender hand buried in the grass, the other resting against her temples. The blessed breeze began to winnow her hair again.