e considered.

"Do you think I look well enough?" she asked.

"Fifty per cent. of them are a good deal worse in those musical
comedies."

"How much should I get?"

"Two pounds a week."

"That's as much as you."

"Yes; but you'd have to work for it. I don't."

"Oh yes; but what sort of work? Nothing to typewriting."

"Perhaps not. But they'd probably expect more than work out of you."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, when a stage manager gives an unknown girl a walk on in the
chorus of a musical comedy, he looks upon it in the light of a favour.
I suppose it is too. He puts her in the way of knowing a lot of
well-to-do young men, and he pays her two pounds a week for doing
nothing but look pretty under the most advantageous circumstances.
There are women who would pay to get a job like that."

Sally's face puckered with disgust. "I think life's beastly," she
said.

Janet smiled. "That's not life," she said; "that's musical comedy."

Then she lit another cigarette and sat there, watching Sally take
off her wet clothes; smiled at her, catching the garments with the
tips of her fingers, and shuddering when they touched her skin.

"You're too sensitive for this business, Sally," she said at last.
"You're too romantic. Why don't you get married?"

"I wish I could," said Sally.

"Well, you don't take your chances."

"What chances?"

"Mr. Arthur--"

They both laughed. Mr. Arthur Montagu was a bank clerk, lodging in
the same house on Strand-on-Green. He had had the same room for over
three years and had, through various stages of acquaintanceship,
come to be addressed by the landlady as Mr. Arthur.

For the first few weeks after the arrival of Sally and Janet, he had
chosen to take his meals in the kitchen--where all meals were
served--after they had finished. His, was a bed-sitting-room, the
only one the house contained, and, in social status, the possession
of it lifted him in rank above any of the other lodgers who shared
the general sitting-room with the landlady, Mrs. Hewson, and her
husband.

But one evening, Sally and he had returned together from Hammersmith
on the tram. They had walked together from the bridge along that river
way, with its tall houses and its little houses, its narrow alleys
and its low-roofed inns, which is perhaps the most picturesque part
of the river that the shattering march of time has left. He had made
intellectual remarks about the effects of the sunlight in the water.