"And do you always expect to be--lucky?" Peter winced at the word.
"I can't afford to think about that," she replied, squinting at the red ink in her glass. "You got to run your risks an' take your chances. All I know is, I'll have more and see more before I die. An' I won't die no sooner nor no painfuller than if I'd stayed on in the fact'ry."
Peter admitted to himself that she probably wouldn't. Also, that he had nothing to say, where Gracie was concerned. He felt helpless in the face of it--as helpless as he had felt one June morning long ago when he had seen old Daddy Neptune praying, after a night of horror, to a Something or a Somebody blind and indifferent. And it seemed to him that life pressed upon him menacingly, as if he and Neptune and this lost child of the New York streets had been caught like rats in a trap.
The girl, on her part, had been watching him with painful intensity.
"You're a new one on _me_," she told him frankly. "I feel like pinchin' you to see if you're real. Say, tell me: if you're real, are you the sort of guy that'd give twenty-five dollars, for nothin', to a girl he picked up in the street? Or, are you just a softy fool that a girl that picks him up in the streets can trim? There's more of _him_ than the first sort," she finished.
"You must judge that for yourself," said Peter. "I may tell you, though, that I am quite used to being called a fool," he finished, tranquilly.
"So?" said she, after another long look. "Well, I--what I mean to say is, I wish to God there was more fools like you. If there was, there'd be less fools like me." After a pause she asked, in a subdued voice:
"I'm sorry," said she. "Not," she added hastily, "that I want to touch you for more money or anything like that, I don't. But I--well, I'd like to know you was livin' in the same town, see?"
Peter saw. But again he had nothing to say. Young as he was, he knew the absurdity of all talk of reform to such as Gracie. As things are they can't reform, they can't even be prevented. He looked at her, thoughtfully.
"I'm not only leaving New York, I'm leaving America to-morrow," he said at last. "I wish there was something I could do for you."
She shook her head. Her little painted face looked pinched. There were shadows under the eyes that should have been soft and dewy. "You can't do nothin'. I'll tell you why. Somehow--I--I'd like you to know."