"You
are very kind. Why do you take so much interest? I am only one more
derelict. You must have seen many."
"Well, I'm just built that way. I took a shine to you the day in
that old ark we ambled about in, and then I'm as fond of Masters as
ever. D'you see? Now, let's get out of this. I'm going to see you
home."
"Home!"
"Well, I'm glad the word gives you a shock, anyway. It's where you
ought to be."
They left the restaurant and although, when they reached the
sidewalk, she took his arm, he noticed that she did not stagger.
They walked up the hill past the north side of the Plaza. The
gambling houses of the fifties and early sixties had moved elsewhere,
and although there were low-browed shops on the east side with
flaring gas jets before them even at this hour, the other three
sides, devoted to offices and rooming-houses, were respectable. There
were a few drunken sailors on the grass, who had wandered too far
from Barbary Coast, but they were asleep.
"I never am molested here," she said. "I don't think I have ever met
any one. Sometimes I have stood in the shadow up there and looked
down Dupont Street. What a sight! Respectable Montgomery Street is
never so crowded at four in the afternoon. And the women! Sometimes I
have envied them, for life has never meant anything to them but just
that.
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