and an ample closet, and, as Paul pointed out, only two doors from the bathroom, had two wide windows, and they looked out upon Times Square.

[Pg 5]

The afternoon was waning. Dots of light embellished the awesome Times Building. Back, lower down Broadway, an automobile leaped into being, poised high in the air, its wheels spinning realistically. A huge and playful kitten chased a ball of twine. A petticoat flapped back and forth in an electrically created gale.

There was a wide seat before one window, and Clancy stretched out upon it, elbows upon the sill and her cheeks pressed into her two palms. Zenith was ten million miles away. She wondered why people had hoped that she wouldn't be lonely. As if anyone could be lonely in New York!

Why, the city was crowded! There were scores of things to do, scores of places to go. While, back home in Zenith, two days ago, she had finished a day just like a hundred preceding, a thousand preceding days. She had washed her hands in the women's dressing-room at Miller & Company's. She had walked home, tired out after a hard day pounding a typewriter for Mr. Frank Miller. Her aunt Hetty—she wasn't really Clancy's aunt—Clancy was an orphan—but she'd lived at Mehitabel Baker's boarding-house since her mother died, four years ago—had met her at the door and said that there was apple pie for supper and she'd saved an extra piece for her. After supper, there'd been a movie, then bed. Oh, occasionally there was a dance, and sometimes a dramatic company, fourth-rate, played at[Pg 6] the opera-house. She thought of "Mlle. Fanchon DeLisle," whose card she carried, whose card was the "Open Sesame."

[Pg 6]

Mademoiselle DeLisle had been in the "New York Blondes." Clancy remembered how, a year ago, when the "flu" first ravaged the country, Mademoiselle DeLisle had been stricken, on the night the Blondes played Zenith. She'd almost died, too. She said herself that, if it hadn't been for Clancy, when nurses were so scarce and hard to get, that she sure would have kicked in. She'd been mighty grateful to Clancy. And when she left, a fortnight after her company, she'd given Clancy this card.

"Morris Beiner ain't the biggest guy in the world, kid," she'd said, "but he's big enough. And he can land you a job. He got me mine," she stated. Then, as she caught a glint of pity in Clancy's eyes, she went on: "Don't judge the stage by the Blondes, and don't judge actresses by me. I'm an old-timer, kid. I never 

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