bled disconsolately tiny scraps
of crust. These she daintily buttered, while her four lanky girls nudged
and whispered.

Victoria did not stay in the conservatory after the important meal. As
she passed through it, a mist of weariness gathering before her eyes,
she had a vision of half a dozen men sleeping in cane chairs, or
studying pink or white evening papers. The young man from the Midlands
had captured another victim and was once more explaining that under
certain circumstances his food would cost him more.

Victoria seemed to have reached the limits of physical endurance. She
fumbled as she divested herself of her clothes; she could not even
collect enough energy to wash. All the room seemed filled with haze.
Her tongue clove to her palate. Little tingles in her eyelids crushed
them together over her pupils. She stumbled into her bed, mechanically
switching off the light by her bedside. In the very act her arm lost its
energy and she sank into a dreamless sleep.

Next morning she breakfasted with good appetite. The fog had almost
entirely lifted and sunshine soft as silver was filtering through the
windows into the little dining-room. Its mahoganous ugliness was almost
warmed into charm. The sideboard shone dully through its covering of
coarse net. Even the stacked cruets remembered the days when they
cunningly blazed in a shop window. A pleasurable feeling of excitement
ran through Victoria's body, for she was going to discover London, to
have adventures. As she closed the door behind her with a definite
little slam she felt like a buccaneer.

Buccaneering in the Edgware Road, even when it is bathed in the morning
sun, soon falls flat in November. It came upon Victoria rather as a
shock that her Indian clothing was rather thin. As her flying visits to
town had only left in her mind a very hazy picture of Regent Street it
was quite unconsciously that she entered the emporium opposite. A frigid
young lady sacrificed for her benefit an abominable vicuna coat which,
she said, fitted Victoria like a glove. Victoria paid the twenty seven
and six with an admirable feeling of recklessness and left the shop
reflecting that she looked the complete charwoman.

She turned into Hyde Park, where the gentle wind was sorrowfully driving
the brown and broken leaves along the rough gravel. The thin tracery of
the trees imaged itself on the road like a giant cobweb. Victoria looked
for a moment towards the south where the mass