THAT ROYLE GIRL
CHAPTER I
Joan Daisy Royle was on her way home from the office, where she had been kept at work throughout the evening, although it was Saturday. She was barely twenty years old, and she was so pleasing a person that Hoberg, who had caused her to be detained, had insisted that he should escort her to her flat; but she had refused him, as she habitually did, and alone she reached the corner of Sheridan Boulevard and Wilson Avenue just as the display lights on both sides of the street were extinguished.
It was late for her to be on her way from work, but the sight of the simultaneous snuffing-out of street lamps was, to her, an ordinary incident; she knew it to be the city's manner of tolling twelve. It marked midnight; that was all. Joan Daisy paid no attention to it nor to the progressive darkening of the shop-windows at her elbow, and upon the opposite side of the road, as clock mechanisms switched off the lights which had been reflected upon shows of extravagant gowns and of fantastic shoes, of perfumes in crystal bottles, of face-powders and paquets, of silk stockings, lingerie, laces and the like appurtenances to woman's beauty and habiliment.
Hotels were left agleam; and the wide windows of a resplendent refectory glowed with the tints of shaded lights upon its many gay tables where midnight couples eyed one another over sherbets and cakes and chocolate. The fires of a grill flickered upon a further pane. Young
1
