THE INTERNET WIRETAP ELECTRONIC EDITION OF

                        The Pit
                   A Story of Chicago

                           By
                      Frank Norris

                          1903

     Prepared by John Hamm <John_Hamm@MindLink.bc.ca>

             This text is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN,
                   released December 1993

     Scanned with OmniPage Professional OCR software
               donated by Caere Corporation.

                Dedicated to My Brother

                 Charles Tolman Norris

      In memory of certain lamentable tales of the
    bound (dining-room) table heroes; of the epic of
     the pewter platoons, and the romance-cycle of
    "Gaston Le Fox," which we invented, maintained,
      and found marvellous at a time when we both
                       were boys.

The PlT

I

At eight o'clock in the inner vestibule of the
Auditorium Theatre by the window of the box office,
Laura Dearborn, her younger sister Page, and their
aunt--Aunt Wess'--were still waiting for the rest of
the theatre-party to appear.  A great, slow-moving
press of men and women in evening dress filled the
vestibule from one wall to another.  A confused murmur
of talk and the shuffling of many feet arose on all
sides, while from time to time, when the outside and
inside doors of the entrance chanced to be open
simultaneously, a sudden draught of air gushed in,
damp, glacial, and edged with the penetrating keenness
of a Chicago evening at the end of February.

The Italian Grand Opera Company gave one of the most
popular pieces of its repertoire on that particular
night, and the Cresslers had invited the two sisters
and their aunt to share their box with them.  It had
been arranged that the party should assemble in the
Auditorium vestibule at a quarter of eight; but by now
the quarter was gone and the Cresslers still failed to
arrive.

"I don't see," murmured Laura anxiously for the last
time, "what can be keeping them.  Are you sure Page
that Mrs. Cressler meant here--inside?"

She was a tall young girl of about twenty-two or three,
holding herself erect and with fine dignity.  Even
beneath the opera cloak it was easy to infer that her
neck and shoulders were beautiful.  Her almost extreme
slenderness was, however, her characteristic; the
curves of her figure, the contour of her shoulders, the
swell of hip and breast were all low; from head to foot
one could discover no pronounced salience.  Yet there
was no trace, no suggestion of angularity.  She was
slender as a willow shoot is slender--and equally
graceful, equally erect.

Next to this charming tenuity, perhaps her paleness was
her most noticeable trait.  But it was not a paleness
of lack of colour.  Laura Dearborn's pallour was in
itself a colour.  It was a tint rather than a shade,
like ivory; a warm white, blending into an exquisite,
delicate brownness towards the throat.  Set in the
middle of this paleness of brow and cheek, her deep
brown eyes glowed lambent and intense.  They were not
large, but in some indefinable way they were important.
It was very natural to speak of her eyes, and in
speaking to her, her friends always found that they
must look squarely into their pupils.  And all this
beauty of pallid face and brown eyes was crowned by,
and sharply contrasted with, the intense blackness of
her hair, abundant, thick, extremely heavy, continually
coruscating with sombre, murky reflections, tragic, in
a sense vaguely portentous,--the coiffure of a heroine
of romance, doomed to dark crises.

On this occasion at the side of the topmost coil, a
white aigrette scintillated and trembled with her every
movement.  She was unquestionably beautiful.  Her mouth
was a little large, the lips firm set, and one would
not have expected that she would smile easily; in fact,
the general expression of her face was rather serious.

"Perhaps," continued Laura, "they would look for us