It was everywhere the painted and the overdressed that drew the roving eyes.
She remembered a pet dog that someone had given her when she was a girl, and how one afternoon she had walked with the tears streaming down her face because, in spite of her scoldings and her pleadings, it would keep stopping to lick up filth from the roadway.

A kindly passer-by had laughed and told her not to mind.
"Why, that's a sign of breeding, that is, Missie," the man had explained.
"It's the classy ones that are always the worst." It had come to her afterwards craving with its soft brown, troubled eyes for forgiveness.

But she had never been able to break it of the habit.
Must man for ever be chained by his appetites to the unclean: ever be driven back, dragged down again into the dirt by his own instincts: ever be rendered useless for all finer purposes by the baseness of his own desires?
The City of her Dreams! The mingled voices of the crowd shaped itself into a mocking laugh.
It seemed to her that it was she that they were laughing at, pointing her out to one another, jeering at her, reviling her, threatening her.
She hurried onward with bent head, trying to escape them.

She felt so small, so helpless.

Almost she cried out in her despair.
She must have walked mechanically.