Hilda glanced out of the window again. She shuddered. A moment more and she would have been lying below there, broken, mangled, unsightly—perhaps not dead, only crippled for life and arrested as a suicide that failed; perhaps as a murderess, since the fall would surely have killed her child—her precious child. She held him close, her great man-baby, her son; he laughed, beat the air with his hands, chuckled, and smote her cheek with palms like white roses. She would take him from this gloomy place. She would go out and demand money, fine clothes, attention.
She put on her hat, a very shabby little hat. She began to wrap the baby in a heavy shawl. They would have finer things soon.
She grew dizzy with excitement and the exertion, and sank back in the chair a moment, to regain her strength. The chair creaked. No, it was a knock at the door. It proved what the last woman had said. "Ask, and it shall be given unto you."
She had wished for some one to call on her. The whole boarding-house was coming. She was giving a party.
This time it was another voice out of the darkness. It must have been Miss Bessett's. She spoke in a cold, hard, hasty tone. "Going out, my dear? Alone, I hope? No, the baby's wrapped up! You're not going to be so foolish as to lug that baby along? He brands you at once. Nobody will want you round with a squalling baby. Oh, of course he's a pretty child; but he's too noisy. He'll ruin every chance you have.
"You're really very pretty, my dear. The landlady said so. If she noticed it, you must be a beauty, indeed. This is a great town for pretty girls. There's a steady market for them.
"The light is poor here, but beauty like yours glows even in darkness, and that's what they want, the men. The world will pay anything for beauty, if beauty has the brains to ask a high price and not give too much for it.
"Think of the slaves who have become queens, the mistresses who have become empresses. There are rich women all over town who came by their money dishonestly. You should see some of them in the Park with their automobiles. You'd be ashamed even to let them run over you. Yet, if you were dressed up, you'd look better than any of the automobile brigade.
"You might be a great singer. I've heard you crooning to the baby. You find a rich man and make him pay for your lessons, and then you make eyes at the manager and, before you know it, you'll be engaged for the opera and earning a thousand dollars a night—more than that, maybe.
"Think how much that means. It would make you mighty glad you didn't marry that young gawp at home. He's a cheap skate to get you into this trouble and not help you out.