ew there was such a room!" She could not define how she was
affected by this fact, but she regarded the fact as tremendously
romantic, and its effect on her was profound. And George saw in it no
significance! She was disconcerted. She felt a tremor; it was as though
the entire King's Road had quivered for a fraction of a second and then,
feigning nonchalance, resumed its moveless solidity.

Inside the chemist's she demanded the first thing she set eyes on--a
tooth-brush. All the while she was examining various shapes of
toothbrushes, she had a vision of George raising his hat to take leave
of her, and she could see not only the curve of his hand and the
whiteness of his cuff, but also the millions of tiny marks and creases
on the coarse skin of his face, extraordinarily different from her own
smooth, pure, delicate, silky complexion. And she remembered that less
than three years ago she had regarded him as of another generation, as
indefinitely older and infinitely more experienced than her childish and
simple self. This reflection produced in her a consternation which was
curiously blissful.

"No, madam," the white-aproned chemist was saying. "It's this size that
we usually sell to ladies."

She put on the serious judicial air of an authentic adult woman, and
frowned at the chemist.

II

When, in Preston Street, she was reluctantly approaching the house, she
saw a cab, coming downwards in the opposite direction, stop at No. 59.

"That must be Florrie!" she said, half-aloud.

The boarding-house being in need of another servant, young, strong, and
reliable, Hilda had suggested that Miss Florence Bagster might be
invited to accept the situation. Sarah Gailey had agreed that it would
be wise to have a servant from Turnhill; she mistrusted southern
servants, and appeared to believe that there was no real honesty south
of the Trent. Florence Bagster had accepted the situation with
enthusiasm, writing that she longed to be again with her former
mistress; she did not write that the mysterious and magnetic name of
Brighton called her more loudly than the name of her former mistress.
And now Florence was due.

But it was not Florence who emerged from the cab. It was a tall and
full-bosomed young lady in a gay multi-coloured costume, and gloves and
a sunshade and a striking hat. This young lady stood by the cab
expectant and smiling while the cabman pulled a tin trunk off the roof
of the vehicle, and then, when the ca