In front of a lighted house the man stopped. The curtains which hung over the two front windows of the house were torn. One of them was half destroyed and Moisse saw into the room in which a gas jet flickered and which was empty.
The man walked up the steps and knocked at the door. It was opened.
“A woman,” whispered Moisse.
She vanished, and the man followed her. The two appeared in a moment in the room with the gas light.
The woman was tall and thin, her hair hung down her back in two scimpy braids. Her face was coated with paint and great hollows loomed under her eyes.
The man walked to her, his open mouth widened in a grin.
“They’re talking,” murmured the young dramatist as he watched their haggard faces move strangely. He noted the woman was dressed in a wrapper, colorless and streaked.
“I wonder—” he began, but the scene captured his attention. He watched absorbed. The woman was shaking her head and backing away from the man who finally halted in the center of the room.
He lifted a foot from the floor and removed its shoe. Standing with the shoe in his hand his eyes glistened at the woman who watched him with her neck stretched forward and a sneer on her lips.
The man put his hand in the shoe and brought out a coin.