m to drop the gun, but he picked it up again,
hurled his inert opponent across the room, and went to Edith. The knife
dropped from her fingers as she saw the blood streaming down his white
shirtfront.

"I don't fight wimmen," he growled. "There ain't nothing I can do to you,
'cept this."

He suddenly caught her and, holding both her wrists in one hand, with the
other tore every shred of clothing from her.... Then without a word he
strode out of the room.

"I'm through with this place," he muttered. "Bright lights! Gosh, I'm
looking for where they don't shine so strong."

Somewhere in England were the graves of his ancestors. He didn't want to
see the graves of his forefathers, even if he could find them, but the
desire to give London the "once over" was now stronger than ever. The next
day he booked a steamer berth and packed his bags.

CHAPTER III

SOCIAL ADVANCEMENT

Jim's first impression of London was an ocean of flying mud, through which
myriads of phantasmagorial creatures and things moved in sullen, unceasing
procession; an all-enveloping wall of brown fog; and a roar like unto some
monster in pain. When he stood on the Embankment and strove to get a
glimpse of the river, he came to the conclusion that "the hub of the
Universe" was not up to specification. The famous Strand amazed him by its
narrowness and its shortness. The buildings were dirtier than any
buildings he had ever seen before, and the people cold, self-contained,
units who seemed visibly to shrink back into their shells at his every
attempt to hold conversation.

For a whole week the fog and the drizzle continued as though no sun
existed, or ever could exist. He wandered aimlessly, like a lost sheep,
wondering how long a man could swallow quarts of dirt with his oxygen
without getting permanently transformed into a human sewer.

But he was getting a grip on things. His brain was gradually adapting
itself to changed conditions. No longer did he gasp when a child in
Stepney picked up orange-peel from the gutter and ate it. Here was the
unending manifestation of Nature's inexorable law, the survival of the
fittest, more clearly and cruelly displayed than in New York. Wealth and
Poverty were more definitely marked. If they merged at all, it was away in
the suburbs, or in the Jewish quarter, whence issued, on Saturdays,
thousands of dark-skinned lads and girls, westward bound, to spend one
hectic evening in the pleasure-ground west of