frequent cafeterias, beauty shops, confectioneries and gay windows already brilliant with electric lights against the dusk of the wintry day; it turned a corner or two and finally halted before an imposing establishment boasting a liveried darky, who hastened to spare Lucas the exertion of opening the cab door. After Lucas had alighted, the doorman looked within the cab as though certain some one must have accompanied the gentleman and then, turning, smirked at Lucas with obvious significance as he inquired, "Who fo', sah?"
Lucas disgustedly elbowed him aside and, entering a glittering, tiled vestibule, he ascended the stairs to the second floor, where he passed along a softly lit, thickly carpeted hallway to the fourth door on the right and rang the bell.
The number of apartments opening into this one hall indicated that this was a building which architecturally was Lucas's pet abomination,—a structure of two-room flats; and the character of the occupants was so plain to Lucas that when, after several moments, a girl opened the door before him, Lucas gazed at her with a disdain which contained no great element of surprise.
