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“Thanks, Patera.” Orchid sounded as though she meant it. “Her father took her. I couldn’t have, not then. But he said—he said—”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Silk repeated.

She had not heard. “Then I found her on the street, you know? She was thirteen, only she said fifteen and I believed her. I didn’t know it was her.” Orchid laughed, and her laughter was worse than tears.

“There’s really no need for you to torment yourself like this.”

“I’m not. I’ve been wanting to tell somebody about it ever since Sphigx was a cub. You already know, so it can’t do any harm. Besides, she’s—she’s—”

“Gone,” Silk supplied.

Orchid shook her head. “Dead. The only one alive, and I’ll never have any more now. You know how places like this work, Patera?”

“No, and I suppose I should.”

“It’s pretty much like a boarding house. Some places, the girls are pretty much like in the Alambrera. They don’t hardly ever let them out, and they take all their money. I was in a place like that once for almost two years.”

“I’m glad that you escaped.”

Orchid shook her head again. “I didn’t. I got sick and they kicked me out—it was the best thing that ever happened to me. What I wanted to say, Patera, is I’m not like that here. My girls rent their rooms, and they can go anytime. About the only thing they can’t do is bring in a buck without his paying. Are you with me?”

“I’m not sure I am,” Silk admitted.

“Like if they meet him outside. If they bring him back here, he has to pay the house. So do those that come here looking. Tonight, we’ll have maybe fifty or a hundred come. They pay the house, and then we show them all the girls that aren’t busy, downstairs in the big room.”

“Suppose that I were to come,” Silk said slowly. “Not dressed as I am now, but in ordinary clothes. And I wanted a particular woman.”

“Chenille.”

Silk shook his head. “Another one.”

“How about Poppy? Little girl, pretty dark.”

“All right,” Silk said. “Suppose I wanted Poppy, but she didn’t want to take me to her room?”

“Then she wouldn’t have to,” Orchid said virtuously, “and you’d have to pick somebody else. Only if she did that very often, I’d kick her out.”

“I see.”

“Only she wouldn’t, Patera. Not to you. She’d jump at you. Any of these girls would.”

Orchid smiled, and Silk, confronted by the effect of her bruises, wanted to strike Blood. Hyacinth’s azoth was under his tunic—he thrust the thought away.

Orchid had seen and misinterpreted his expression; her smile vanished. “I didn’t get to finish telling you about Orpine, Patera. All right if I go on about her?”

Silk said, “Certainly, if you wish.”

“I found her on the street, like I told you. That’s something I do sometimes, go around looking for somebody if I’ve got an empty room. She said her name was Pine—you don’t hardly ever get a straight name out of them—and she was fifteen, and it never hit me. It just didn’t.”

“I understand,” Silk said.

“Somebody dusted her dial, you know what I mean? So I said, listen, lots of girls live with me, and nobody lays a finger on them. You come along, and we’ll give you a good hot meal, free, and you’ll see. So she said she didn’t have the rent money, like they always do, and I said I’d trust her for the first month. That’s what I always say.

“After she’d been here nearly a year, she ducked out of the big room. I said what’s wrong, and she said her father had come in and he’d made her do certain things for him when she was little, and that was why she’d run out on him. You know what I mean, Patera?”

Silk nodded, his fists clenched.

“She told me his name, and I went out and looked at him again, and it was him. So then I knew who she was, and by and by I told her all about it.” Orchid smiled; it seemed strange to Silk that the identical word should indicate her earlier expression as well.

“I’m glad I did it now. Real glad. I told her not to expect any favors, and I didn’t give her any. Or at least, not very often. What I did, though—what I did—”

Silk waited patiently, his eyes averted.

“What I did was start having cake on the birthdays, so we could have it on hers. And I called her Orpine instead of Pine, and pretty soon everybody did.” Orchid daubed at her eyes with the hem of the pink peignoir. “All right, that’s it. Who told you?”

“Your faces, to begin with.”

Orchid nodded. “She was beautiful. Everybody said so.”

“Not when I saw her, because there was something in her face that didn’t belong there. Still it struck me that her face was a younger version of your own, although that could have been coincidence or my imagination. A moment later I heard her name—Orpine. It sounds a great deal like yours, and it seemed to me that it was such a name as a woman named Orchid might choose, especially if she had lost an earlier daughter. Did you? You don’t have to tell me about it.”

Orchid nodded.