out to seek their prey. On
the Orient Promenade, the finer animalism has vanished; it was never
more than superficially aesthetic. The daughters of pleasure may still be
tigers, but they are naphtha-lit, pacing backwards and forwards in a
cage. They all appear alike. Their hats are all too large, their figures
are too brutal, their cheeks too lifeless. They are automatic machines
of lust waiting to be stirred into action by pennies.

Under the stars they achieve a pictorial romance; but on the carpet of
the Promenade, they are hard and heartless and vile. Their eyes are
coins; their hands are purses. At their heels patter old men like
unhealthy lap-dogs; beefy provincials stare at them, their foreheads
glistening. Above all the frangipani and patchouli and opoponax and
trefle incarnat steals the rank odor of goats. The orchestra thunders
and crashes down below; the comfortable audience lean back in the
stalls; the foreigners jabber in the gallery; the Orient claque
interrupts its euchre with hired applause. The corks pop; the soda
splashes; money chinks; lechery murmurs; drunkards laugh; and down on
the stage Jenny Pearl dances.

The night wears on. The women come in continually from the wet streets.
They surge in the cloak-room, quarrel over carrion game, blaspheme,
fight and scratch. A door in the cloak-room (locked of course) leads
into the passage outside the dressing-room, where Jenny changes five or
six times each night. Every foul oath and every vile experience and
every detestable adventure is plainly heard by twenty ladies of the
ballet.

Dressing-room number forty-five was a long, low room, with walls of
whitewashed brick. There was one window, seldom opened. There was no
electric light, and the gas-jets gave a very feeble illumination, so
feeble that everybody always put on too much grease paint in their fear
of losing an effect. The girls dressed on each side of the room at a
wide deal board with forms to sit upon. There was a large wardrobe in
one corner, and next to Jenny's place an open sink. The room was always
dark and always hot. There were about eighty stone stairs leading up to
it from the stage, and at least half a dozen ascents in the course of
the evening. The dresser was a blowsy old Irish woman, more obviously
dirty than the room, and there were two ventilators, which gave a
perpetual draught of unpleasant air. The inspectors of the London County
Council presumably never penetrated as far as