her shoulders. She might have argued with Lizzie as
she had once argued with Gertie, but the vague truth that lurked in
Lizzie's economics had deprived her of argument. Could theft sometimes
be something else than theft? Were all things theft? And above all, did
the acceptance of a woman's hand as bait justify the hooking of a
sixpence?

As Victoria left for home that night she felt restless. She could not go
to bed so soon. She walked through the silent city lanes; meeting
nothing, save now and then a cat on the prowl, or a policeman trying
doors and flashing his bull's eye through the gratings of banks. The
crossing at Mansion House was still busy with the procession of
omnibuses converging at the feet of the Duke of Wellington. Drays, too
heavily loaded, rumbled slowly past towards Liverpool Street. She turned
northwards, walked quickly through the desert. At Liverpool Street
station she stopped in the blaze of light. A few doors away stood a
shouting butcher praying the passers-by to buy his pretty meat. Further:
a fishmonger's stall, an array of glistening black shapes on white
marble, a tobacconist, a jeweller--all aglow with coruscating light. And
over all, the blazing light of arc lamps, under which an unending stream
of motor cabs, lorries, omnibuses passed in kaleidoscopic colours. In
the full glare of a lamp post stood a woman, her feet in the gutter. She
was short, stunted, dirty and thin of face and body. Round her wretched
frame a filthy black coat was tightly buttoned; her muddy skirt seemed
almost falling from her shrunken hips. Crushed on her sallow face,
hiding all but a few wisps of hair, was a battered black straw hat. With
one arm she carried a child, thin of face too, and golden-haired. On its
upper lip a crusted sore gleamed red and brown. In her other hand she
held out a tin lid, in which were five boxes of matches.

Victoria looked at the silent watcher and passed on. A few minutes later
she remembered her and a fearful flood of insight rushed upon her. The
child? Then this, this creature had known love? A man had kissed those
shrivelled lips. Something like a thrill of disgust ran through her.
That such things as these could love and mate and bear children was
unspeakable; the very touch of them was loathsome, their love akin to
unnatural vice.

As she walked further into Shoreditch the impression of horror grew on
her. It was not that the lanes and little streets abutting into the High
Stre