[
{"chunk":377,"story":41,"summary":"A young woman works the cashier's cage at a crowded downtown restaurant, taking money through an arch in a brass screen.","predicament":"Someone works where everyone must pass them and pay."},
{"chunk":378,"story":41,"summary":"She counts change, deflects proposals and rates every customer at once, and every man who pays adores her.","predicament":"Someone's position makes them the object of everyone's flattery all day long."},
{"chunk":379,"story":41,"summary":"The young men trade compliments and hints of presents, and one broker proposes to her more often than he eats.","predicament":"Someone receives offers so constantly that none of them can be taken seriously."},
{"chunk":380,"story":41,"summary":"Her talk runs on in one stream of sums, refusals, appointments and rebukes as the queue pays and passes.","predicament":"Someone handles money and flattery in the same breath, all day, by pure habit."},
{"chunk":381,"story":41,"summary":"An old banker collapses outside, is carried in, and he and his wife take to the beautiful cashier who tended him.","predicament":"Someone's kindness in an emergency wins them the notice of people far above them."},
{"chunk":382,"story":41,"summary":"She resigns to be adopted, saying she will miss the cage, and money is poured out to polish her.","predicament":"Someone leaves the only work they know for a life that must be taught to them."},
{"chunk":383,"story":41,"summary":"At a charity bazaar an earl approaches her booth's brass wicket; she answers him as a cashier would, and faints.","predicament":"Someone's old habit answers for them at the moment their new life is decided."},
{"chunk":384,"story":42,"summary":"A magazine editor, content with his life, wanders into a small park on a spring afternoon.","predicament":"Someone comfortable and well pleased with themselves takes a walk."},
{"chunk":385,"story":42,"summary":"Pleased by his sales, his salary and his wife's new devotion to singing, he is caught by the sleeve by a shabby acquaintance.","predicament":"Someone at their most satisfied is stopped in the street by a friend who has failed."},
{"chunk":386,"story":42,"summary":"The shabby man is a fiction writer ruined by a loss, whose stories the editor returns with careful letters of explanation.","predicament":"Someone poor keeps submitting work to a prosperous friend who keeps refusing it."},
{"chunk":387,"story":42,"summary":"On a park bench the writer calls it his office and insists he will force the magazines to admit his work is good.","predicament":"Someone with nothing left insists that the people rejecting them are wrong."},
{"chunk":388,"story":42,"summary":"The editor praises the plot and style, then says he spoils every climax with flat and drab strokes.","predicament":"Someone is told the exact thing they believe in is what ruins their work."},
{"chunk":389,"story":42,"summary":"They argue whether a mother whose child is taken speaks in grand words or in her ordinary muddled ones.","predicament":"Two people argue about how a person really behaves at the worst moment of their life."},
{"chunk":390,"story":42,"summary":"The editor holds that deep emotion calls out a fitting and elevated expression, learned from the stage and from life.","predicament":"Someone defends a theory about others' feelings that neither of them has tested."},
{"chunk":391,"story":42,"summary":"The writer quotes his own banal lines, and asks whether the editor would buy the story if it were proved true to life.","predicament":"Someone asks whether proof would change the mind that has judged them."},
{"chunk":392,"story":42,"summary":"The writer proposes to prove it from life with his own wife, saying he is down to his last dollar.","predicament":"Someone desperate offers to test a theory on the person closest to them."},
{"chunk":393,"story":42,"summary":"The scheme is a false note saying he has run off; the editor calls it cruel and the writer presses him.","predicament":"Someone proposes to wound another to win an argument, and calls it harmless."},
{"chunk":394,"story":42,"summary":"They climb to the bare flat, where he finds a note his wife left that morning and reads it aloud.","predicament":"Someone setting a trap finds the real thing has already been sprung on them."},
{"chunk":395,"story":42,"summary":"The wives have gone on the road together; the writer declaims in grand style and the editor blurts out slang.","predicament":"Two people are struck by the same blow and each answers it in the other's manner."},
{"chunk":396,"story":43,"summary":"Two rival gangs observe strict politeness in a saloon while each watches the other in the mirror.","predicament":"People bound by a feud share a room and keep their manners until they cannot."},
{"chunk":397,"story":43,"summary":"The etiquette breaks, one man is knifed in the dark, and the wounded man refuses to name who did it.","predicament":"Someone injured refuses to name their attacker, meaning to settle it themselves."},
{"chunk":398,"story":43,"summary":"The saloon keeper has told the police, so the knifer must stay hidden until the fixer returns from abroad.","predicament":"Someone must stay out of sight until the one person who can protect them returns."},
{"chunk":399,"story":43,"summary":"A week of hiding becomes unbearable and he goes to an unfamiliar late resort where nobody knows him.","predicament":"Someone in hiding risks one night out where they hope not to be recognised."},
{"chunk":400,"story":43,"summary":"The resort's distinction is that women may smoke there, which makes its proprietor twenty years ahead of his time.","predicament":"A place draws people by permitting what everywhere else forbids."},
{"chunk":401,"story":43,"summary":"A girl comes in alone, sits opposite him, lights a cigarette and smiles at him, and both are done for.","predicament":"Two strangers decide about each other in the space of a single look."},
{"chunk":402,"story":43,"summary":"Each at once begins to pretend; she explains her cigarette by an aunt, and he tells her to stop it.","predicament":"Two people who have just met begin immediately to improve their own histories."},
{"chunk":403,"story":43,"summary":"She gives a fine name, says she binds books and works overtime, and only came in for a smoke.","predicament":"Someone explains their presence somewhere improper as innocently as they can."},
{"chunk":404,"story":43,"summary":"He offers to walk her home and invents a rich father and a seat on the exchange to recommend himself.","predicament":"Someone invents a grand family to make themselves acceptable to a person they like."},
{"chunk":405,"story":43,"summary":"At one the doors are locked and the drinks become illegal, which sweetens everything in the room.","predicament":"People value an ordinary pleasure more once it is forbidden."},
{"chunk":406,"story":43,"summary":"He asks whether her story was true, believes her, and asks her to be his steady girl.","predicament":"Someone asks the person they want for a plain account of who they are."},
{"chunk":407,"story":43,"summary":"They arrange a visit on Thursday; then blows fall on the street door and the lights go out.","predicament":"Two people making plans are interrupted by the thing one of them was hiding from."},
{"chunk":408,"story":43,"summary":"The guests escape by a ladder; she stops to ask again whether he really likes her, and they are left behind.","predicament":"Someone loses their chance to escape by stopping to ask for reassurance."},
{"chunk":409,"story":43,"summary":"A policeman finds the two, takes off his hat, names him as the man who knifed another, and orders him along.","predicament":"Someone in hiding is recognised by an officer who means to take them in."},
{"chunk":410,"story":43,"summary":"She hurls herself at the officer, claims the man as hers, throws money on the table and names the bribe he takes.","predicament":"Someone saves another by revealing exactly what they are and what the officer is."},
{"chunk":411,"story":43,"summary":"Outside he hands the money back; she says he will not want to see her, and tells him what she had hoped to be.","predicament":"Someone gives up the person they wanted rather than be taken for what they are."},
{"chunk":412,"story":43,"summary":"He confesses his own lies, takes her two blocks to a clergyman's door and rings the bell.","predicament":"Someone answers another's confession by marrying them on the spot."},
{"chunk":413,"story":44,"summary":"The essay distinguishes fortune, adventure and chance, and names the venturer as one who watches the roadside.","predicament":"Someone travelling toward a goal cares more for what lies beside the road."},
{"chunk":414,"story":44,"summary":"A clubman walks out on a familiar story, craving a turn of events whose ending he cannot already foresee.","predicament":"Someone knows the end of every road available to them and wants one they do not."},
{"chunk":415,"story":44,"summary":"He wanders an hour, declines his favourite hotel as no venture, and decides to dine somewhere doubtful instead.","predicament":"Someone deliberately chooses discomfort in the hope of being surprised."},
{"chunk":416,"story":44,"summary":"He finds not a penny in thirteen pockets, and a stranger nearby admits he has just done the same.","predicament":"Someone with money in the bank and none in their pocket meets another in the same case."},
{"chunk":417,"story":44,"summary":"The stranger proposes they dine expensively and match his two pennies to see who faces the bill.","predicament":"Two strangers agree to run a risk together for the sake of the outcome."},
{"chunk":418,"story":44,"summary":"The stranger explains he seeks adventures whose conclusion he cannot predict, and would bet without seeing his hand.","predicament":"Someone wants to act without being able to guess what will follow."},
{"chunk":419,"story":44,"summary":"He says civilisation has posted signboards on every path, and that even ruin now has a known address.","predicament":"Someone complains that every risk available to them has a predictable end."},
{"chunk":420,"story":44,"summary":"His most promising premise, a veiled lady's note in a bazaar, ended with a journalist wanting newspaper work.","predicament":"Someone's most mysterious opening turned out to have an ordinary explanation."},
{"chunk":421,"story":44,"summary":"Rapids, cards and strange doorbells all end conventionally; the only certain thing is that nothing is uncertain.","predicament":"Someone has tried every risk they can think of and found each one predictable."},
{"chunk":422,"story":44,"summary":"The clubman loses the toss and proposes the other slip away while he holds the check and faces the outcome.","predicament":"Someone loses a wager and arranges for the winner to escape the consequence."},
{"chunk":423,"story":44,"summary":"He signs the check, confessing he dines there weekly; the other confesses he owns the hotel.","predicament":"Two people risking everything discover neither was risking anything at all."},
{"chunk":424,"story":44,"summary":"The clubman says he is engaged, loves the lady, and dreads the certainty of everything that will follow.","predicament":"Someone loves a person and fears the life with them for being entirely foreseeable."},
{"chunk":425,"story":44,"summary":"The hotel owner calls at an unchanging old house and is met warmly by a young woman he has known for years.","predicament":"Someone returns after years to a person and a house that have not changed at all."},
{"chunk":426,"story":44,"summary":"She recalls that he never would play a game with rules, and tells him plainly he could have had her.","predicament":"Someone is told by another that the thing they wanted was always available."},
{"chunk":427,"story":44,"summary":"He reflects that she and the house offer no surprises; she says she is going to be married soon.","predicament":"Someone left a person for being predictable and finds they are about to be lost."},
{"chunk":428,"story":44,"summary":"The clubman sails to escape certainty; the other says he has found the real hazard, having married her yesterday.","predicament":"Someone finds the greatest uncertainty in the very commitment another is fleeing."}
]