d tentative, anything obscure and
gradual about the approaches of the London Spring. Spring is always in a
hurry there, for she knows that she has but a short time before her; she
has to make an impression and make it at once; so she works careless of
delicacies and shades, relying on broad telling strokes, on strong
outlines and stinging contrasts. She is like a clever artist handicapped
with her materials. Only a patch of grass, a few trees and the sky; but
you wake one morning and the boughs are drawn black and bold against the
blue; and leaves are sharp as emeralds against the black; and the grass
in the squares and the shrubs in the gardens repeat the same brilliant
extravaganza; and it is all very eccentric and beautiful and daring. That
is the way of a Cockney Spring, and when you are used to it the charm is
undeniable.

One day Miss Quincey walked in Camden Town and noted the singular
caprices of the Spring. Strange longings, freaks of the blood and brain,
stirred within her at this bursting of the leaf. They led her into Camden
Road, into the High Street, to the great shops where the virginal young
fashions and the artificial flowers are. At this season Hunter's window
blooms out in blouses of every imaginable colour and texture and form.
There was one, a silk one, of so discreet and modest a mauve that you
could have called it lavender. To say that it caught Miss Quincey's eye
would be to wrong that maidenly garment. There was nothing blatant,
nothing importunate in its behaviour. Gently, imperceptibly, it stole
into the field of vision and stood there, delicately alluring. It could
afford to wait. It had not even any pattern to speak of, only an
indefinable white something, a dice, a diaper, a sprig. It was the sprig
that touched her, tempted her.

Amongst the poorer ranks of Miss Quincey's profession the sumptuary laws
are exceptionally severe. It is a crime, a treachery, to spend money on
mere personal adornment. You are clothed, not for beauty's sake, but
because the rigour of the climate and of custom equally require it. Miss
Quincey's conscience pricked her all the time that she stood looking in
at Hunter's window. Never before had she suffered so terrible a
solicitation of the senses. It was as if all those dim and germinal
desires had burst and blossomed in this sinful passion for a blouse. She
resisted, faltered, resisted; turned away and turned back again. The
blouse sat immovable on its wooden bust