ers the will-to-live had been
stripped clean off. These men helped you to understand the state of mind
which puts a city to the sack, and makes victims especially of the
innocent and the defenceless. Hilda was strangely excited. She was
afraid, and enjoyed being afraid. And it was as if she, too, had been
returned to savagery and to the primeval. In the midst of peril, she was
a female under the protection of a male, and nothing but that. And she
was far closer, emotionally, to her male than she had ever been before.

Suddenly, the meeting came to an end. In an instant, the mass of
humanity was afoot and rounding upon them, an active menace. Hilda and
Edwin rushed fleeing into the street, violently urged by a common
impulse. The stream of embittered men pursued them like an inundation.
When they were safe, and breathing the free air, Hilda was drenched with
a sense of pity. The tragedy of existence presented itself in its true
aspect, as noble and majestic and intimidating.

"It's terrible!" she breathed.

She thought: "No! In this mood, it is impossible for me to leave him! I
cannot do it! I cannot!" The danger of re-entering the shop, which would
be closed now, utterly fascinated her. Supposing that she re-entered the
shop with him, would she have the courage to tell him that she was in
his society under false pretences? Could she bring herself to relate her
misfortune? She recoiled before the mere idea of telling him. And yet
the danger of the shop glittered in front of her like a lure.

The future might be depending solely on her own act. If she told him of
the lost handkerchief, the future might be one thing: if she did not
tell him, it might be another.

The dread of choosing seized her, and put her into a tremble of
apprehension. And then, as it were mechanically, she murmured (but very
clearly), tacking the words without a pause on to a sentence about the
strikes: "Oh, I've lost my handkerchief, unless I've left it in your
shop! It must have dropped out of my muff."

She sighed in relief, because she had chosen. But her agitation was
intensified.

IV

In search of a lost handkerchief, they regained the Clayhanger premises
by an unfamiliar side door. She preceded him along a passage and then,
taking a door on the left, found herself surprisingly in the shop,
behind a counter. The shop was lighted only by a few diamond-shaped
holes in the central shutters, and it had a troubling aspect of portent,
with