saw the little man at a speaking tube and heard him sing in a soft smooth high monotone, un-sho-co-lat. He brought her things and arranged them carefully about her and brought her an Illustrated London News from another table. She sipped and munched and looked at all the pictures. The people in the pictures were real people. She imagined them moving and talking in all manner of circumstances and suffered their characteristics gently, feeling as if someone were there gently half-reproachfully holding her hands tied behind her back. The waiter roamed up and down the aisle. People came in, sometimes two or three at a time. The little man was sitting writing with a stern bent face at a little table at the far end of the restaurant just in front of a marble counter holding huge urns and glass dishes piled with buns and slices of cake. He did not move again until she rose to go when he came once more hurrying down the aisle. Her bill was sixpence and he took the coin with a bow and waited while she extricated herself from the clinging velvet, and held the door wide for her to pass out. Good evening thank you very much she murmured hoping that he heard, in response to his polite farewell. She wandered slowly home through the drizzling rain warmed and fed and with a glow at her heart. Inside those frightful frosted doors was a home, a bit of her own London home.
The hall gas was out. The dining-room door was ajar showing a faint light and light was coming from the little room at the end of the passage. Miriam cautiously pushed open the dining-room door. Mrs. Bailey was sitting alone poised socially in a low armchair by the fire with the gas turned low. Miriam came dutifully forward in response to the entrancement of her smile and stood on the hearthrug enwrapped in her evening, invaded by the sense of beginning it anew with Mrs. Bailey. When had she seen Mrs. Bailey last? She could tell her now about Eve in great confidential detail and explain that she could not at present afford to come to Tansley Street. That would be a great sociable conversation and the engagement with Mr. Bowdoin would remain untouched. She stood in a glow of eloquence. Mrs. Bailey preened and bridled and made