There was little attempt for employment except when the twenty dollars
left from the sale of effects and funeral expenses began to dwindle. She
would wake up nights, sweaty with the nightmare that her room was some
far-off ward for incorrigibles and that one of the strange, veiny-nosed
inmates was filching her small leather bag from beneath her pillow.

When her little roll had flattened finally down to five one-dollar bills
she took to daily and conscientiously buying morning papers and scanning
want-advertisements as she stood at the news-stand, answering first
those that were within walking-distance.

She would make a five-block detour of the Criterion rather than pass
the nearer to it.

Once, returning after a fruitless tour of the smaller department stores,
and borne along by the six-o'clock tide of Sixth Avenue, her heart
leaped up at sight of Miss Cora Kinealy, homeward bound on her smart
tall heels that clicked, arm in arm with Mabel Runyan of the notions.
Standing there with her folded newspaper hugged to her and the small
hand-bag dangling, Stella Schump gazed after.

It was not only the lack of references or even of experience that
conspired against her every effort at employment. It was the lack
of luster to the eye, an absolutely new tendency to tiptoe, a
furtive lookout over her shoulder, a halting tongue, that, upon
the slightest questioning, would stutter for words. Where there were
application-blanks to be filled in she would pore inkily over them and,
after a while, slyly crunch hers up in her hand and steal out. She was
still pinkly and prettily clean, and her hair with its shining mat of
plaits, high of gloss, but one Saturday half-holiday, rather than break