A shabby little woman detached herself from the steadily marching throng on the avenue and paused before a shop window, from which solid rows of electric bulbs flashed brilliantly into the December twilight. The ever-increasing current of Christmas shoppers flowed on. Now and then it rolled up, like the waters of the Jordan, while a lady with rich warm furs about her shoulders made safe passage from her car to the tropic atmosphere of the great department store.

Warmth, and the savory smells from a bakery kitchen wafted up through the grating of a near-by pavement, modifying the nipping air. The shabby little woman, only half conscious of such gratuitous comfort, adjusted her blinking gaze to the brightness and looked hungrily at the costumes shimmering under the lights. Wax figures draped with rainbow-tinted, filmy evening gowns caught her passing admiration, but she lingered over the street costumes, the silk-lined coats and soft, warm furs. Elbowed by others who like herself were eager to look, even though they could not buy, she held her ground until she had made her choice.

With her wistful gaze still fixed upon her favorite, she had begun to edge her way through the crowd at the window, when she felt, rather than saw, someone different from the rest, close at her side. At the same instant, she caught the scent of fresh-cut flowers and looked up into the eyes of a tall young girl in a white-plumed velvet hat, with a bunch of English violets in her brown mink fur.

As their glances met, the shabby little woman checked a start, and half-defensively dropped her lids. The smile that shone evanescently from the girl\'s cordial eyes had aroused in her a feeling of something unwonted, and strangely intimate. There had flashed over the mobile face beneath the velvet hat a look of personal interest—an unmistakable impulse to speak.

The thrill of response that set the woman\'s pulses throbbing died suddenly. The red that mottled her grayish cheeks was the red of shame. Through the window, in a mirrored panel cruelly ablaze with light, she saw herself: her made-over turban, her short, pigeon-tailed jacket of a style long past, and her old otter cape with its queer caudal decorations and its yellowed cracks grinning through the plucked and ragged fur.

One glance at her own image was enough. The little woman pushed determinedly into the slow-moving crush, and headed toward the nearest elevated station, to be carried on irresistibly by the army of pedestrians.

She caught a last glimpse of the tall young girl, coming in her direction, still watching her with that same eager look. But what of that? She knew why women stared curiously at her. By the time her station was reached, the occurrence had assumed in her mind a painful significance which emphasized the sordidness of her evening\'s routine. She made her way along a narrow, dimly lighted street, walking with the aimless gait of one who neither expects nor is expected.

But, loiter as she might, she soon reached a neighborhood where rows of narrow brick tenements brooded over dingy, cluttered basement shops. Here she found it necessary to accelerate her pace to make way for romping children and bareheaded women hurrying from the shops with their suppers in paper bags.

In spite of the wintry chill, the section had an air of activity all its own. Neither did it lack occasional evidences of Christmas cheer. In the window of a little news and fruit shop, against the smeared and partly frosted glass, a holly wreath was hanging, and within stood a rack of gaudy, tinseled Christmas cards. The woman hesitated, as if about to enter the shop, then abruptly passed on. She ascended one of the stoops that were all alike. Standing in a blur of reddish light that filtered through the broken glass above the door, she looked back the way she had come.

For an instant her pulses quickened again as they had done on the avenue down-town. At the corner, a tall girl with a white-plumed velvet hat was smilingly picking her way through the swarming element so foreign, apparently, to one of her class. As the white plume came nearer and nearer, the tremulous little woman regained her self-control. It was but one of the coincidences of the city, she told herself, turning resolutely away. The door slammed shut behind her.

Odd, she thought, as she groped her way through the dimly lighted lower hall, and the complete darkness of the upper, that such a girl should be living in such a neighborhood. Then, with an effort, she dismissed the matter from her mind.

To find a match and light the sputtering gas required but very few steps in her tiny box of a room. When that was accomplished, she could think of nothing more to do. Her little taste of excitement had spoiled her zest for any of the homy rites which at other times formed the biggest events of her day. As she sank down upon the cot without removing her wraps, she was greeted by the usual creaking of rusty springs; her table with its meager array of dishes, its coffee pot and little alcohol burner, sat as ever in its corner, inviting the preparation of her evening meal. But to-night she did not want to eat. She had not visited the bake-shop on her way home. She had not even bought her daily paper at the corner stand where the postcards were—those gay Christmas cards that bring you greetings from friends.

As she slowly removed her turban, her jacket and fur cape and, without getting up, tossed them across a chair against the opposite wall, the dull ache of dissatisfaction in her heart grew slowly to a sharp pain of desire. She wanted to do something, to have something happen that might break the sordid routine of her existence.

Still, habit and environment would continue to force at least a part of this routine upon her. She glanced at her fingers, stained to an oily, bluish grime by the cheap dye of the garments that furnished her daily work. Mechanically she rose to wash.

While her hands were immersed in the lather of rankly perfumed toilet soap, there came a gentle knock at the door.

"Come in," invited the woman, expecting some famine-pressed neighbor for a spoonful of coffee or a drawing of tea.

The door opened slowly, a tentative aperture.

"May I come in?" asked a voice that was sweeter than the breath of violets that preceded the caller into the room.

With the towel clutched in her dripping hands, the woman flung wide open the door, then hastened to unload the chair which held her wraps—her only chair.

"Thank you; don\'t bother," urged the visitor. "I shall like sitting on the couch."

There was a melody of enthusiasm in this remark, which the complaining of the cot, as the girl dropped easily upon it, could not wholly drown.

The woman, having absently hung her towel on the doorknob, stared dazedly at the visitant. She could hardly credit her eyes. It was—it was indeed the girl with the white ostrich plume and the bouquet of violets in her brown mink fur.

"I feel like an intruder," began the girl, "and, do you know—" her appraising glance directed to the old fur collar on the chair, was guiltily withdrawn as she spoke—"do you know, I\'ve such a silly excuse for coming." She laughed, and the laugh brought added music to her voice.

The woman, now at last recalled from her abstraction, smiled, and the weariness passed from her face. She seated herself at the extreme end of the humpy, complaining cot.

"I\'m sure you\'ll understand," resu............