Then for a brief moment a cry of protest, or scorn, or pity goes up.

The passers-by raise their hands in anger, draw their skirts aside in horror, or kneel in tenderness.

It is the same the world over, and New York is no better and, for that matter, no worse.
On one of these rain-drenched nights, some ten years or more ago, when the streets were flooded with jewels, and the sky-line aflame, a man in a slouch hat, a wet mackintosh clinging to his broad shoulders, stood close to the entrance of one of the principal playhouses along this Great White Way.

He had kept his place since the doors were opened, his hat-brim, pulled over his brow, his keen eye searching every face that passed.

To all appearances he was but an idle looker-on, attracted by the beauty of the women, and yet during all that time he had not moved, nor had he been in the way, nor had he been observed even by the door man, the flap of the awning casting its shadow about him.