She cast about vainly for some possible place to apply, but found no door which she had the courage to enter.

It would be the same thing all over.

The old humiliation of her plea, rewarded by curt denial.

Sick at heart and in body, she turned to the west, the direction of Minnie's flat, which she had now fixed in mind, and began that wearisome, baffled retreat which the seeker for employment at nightfall too often makes.

In passing through Fifth Avenue, south towards Van Buren Street, where she intended to take a car, she passed the door of a large wholesale shoe house, through the plate-glass windows of which she could see a middle-aged gentleman sitting at a small desk.