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She had never seen anything like it in her entire life. It wasn't as if she would die if she couldn't become an actress. Back home in Springs being an actress had seemed both glamorous and obtainable, because it had been part of a dream world. She had read all the plays of Eugene O'Neill and J. M. Barrie and Kaufman and Hart, and she had said the hnes aloud in the privacy of her own room. That didn't give her any more right to be a successful actress, she realized, than cutting out recipes gave one a right to be a chef at the Waldorf. Being an actress had been part of a fantasy, a picture, which had included tall buildings in the blue twilight and the fountain in front of the Plaza, seeing Marlene Dietrich buying handkerchiefs at Bonwit's, and Frank Sinatra coming out of Lindy's, and beautiful women no one had ever heard of wearing white mink and diamonds and being escorted by handsome older men. The body of the fantasy was true, she was walking in it and looking at it, breathlessly. And the actress part of it? She hadn't realized until she had actually been walking past those tail buildings in the blue twilight how insignificant she really was. Where could she ever begin to attack a fortress like New York? She didn't even

    want to. She only wanted to stay there until she herself was part of it, one of those well-groomed, well-attended women, and she half realized that was a fantasy too. She only had to walk up the three flights to her dingy room to know what a fantasy it was. Nevertheless, she was very happy, and every moment brought something new and exciting. Nobody else back home had been rejected in person by Mr. George Abbott.
    An employment-agency ad in The New York Times interested her. She went to the agency, and was sent to Fabian Publications. She had wanted one of the ninety-dollar-a-week jobs, but this was her first, and she was told to take it and be glad for the experience. Everyone at home had read My Secret Life avidly in high school-she herself had outgrown it only three years before. To tell the truth she was quite thrilled to be working at the very source of a magazine which had helped build up much of her present misinformation. Her grandmother read The Cross, too. She wrote home about her new job immediately, and also broke the news that she was not coming back, at least not for a long time.
    She drank her coffee standing up and dressed hastily. Here it was eight-thirty and she had been daydreaming again. As she emerged into the street she caught sight of her reflection in the window of a dehcatessen next door to her apartment house. Her coat was too short—or was it? She remembered the girl in the tweed suit with the raccoon collar who had been working at the desk next to hers yesterday afternoon at Fabian. What a sophisticated-looking girl! Something about her looked—right. Was it the leather gloves? Perhaps white cotton gloves looked terrible in January. They were her best gloves, and so she had never given them a second thought. She looked down at them and noticed for the first time the hole in the finger. She pulled them off and stuffed them into her purse and walked quickly to the subway.
    She was still rather frightened of the subway and never could bring herself to run for a train the way the other people did, for fear one of the huge doors would close on her and leave her half in and half out, screaming as the car bore her away to a mysterious and horrible death in the darkness of the tunnel. She watched the people scurrying and pushing one another as the sound of an approaching train grew louder, and she delayed for a moment in front of the change booth counting out her money for a token.

    "Good morning," she said pleasantly to the man behind the bars. He was one of the few people in New York whom she had seen more than once, and this gave her a rather friendly feeling toward him. She always said good morning to him, it made her feel less lonely.
    "How are you today?"
    "Just fine," she