doesn't say you've got to
pay my board, does it?" she demanded proudly.

"Once in a way won't matter," Michael insisted. "And we might go on to a
music hall afterward."

"Yes, we might, if I hadn't got to pay the woman who's looking after my
kid for some clothes she's made for him," said Poppy. "And sitting with
you at the Holborn all night won't do that. No, you can give me dinner
and then I'll P.O. I'm not going to put on a frock even for you, because
I never get off only when I'm in a coat and skirt."

Michael rose to leave the room while Poppy got ready.

"Go on, sit down. As you're going to take me out to dinner, you can talk
to me while I dress as a reward."

In this faded pink room where the sun was by now shining with a splendor
that made all the strewn clothes seem even more fusty and overblown,
Michael could not have borne to see a live thing take shape as it were
from such corruption. He made an excuse therefore of letters to be
written and left Poppy to herself, asking to be called when she was
ready.

Michael's own room upstairs had a real solidity after the ground-floor
front. He wondered if it were possible that Lily was inhabiting at this
moment such a room as Poppy's. It could not be. It could not be. And he
realized that he had pictured Lily like Manon in the midst of luxury,
craving for magnificence and moving disdainfully before gilded mirrors.
This Poppy Carlyle of Neptune Crescent belonged to another circle of the
underworld. Lily would be tragical, but this little peaked creature
downstairs was scarcely even pathetic. Indeed, she was almost grotesque
with the coat and skirt that was to insure her getting off. Of course
her only chance was to attract a jaded glance by her positive plainness,
her schoolma'am air, her decent unobtrusiveness. Yet she was plucky, and
she had accepted the responsibility of supporting her child. There was,
too, something admirable in the candor with which she had treated him.
There was something friendly and birdlike about her, and he thought how
when he had been first aware of her movements below he had compared them
to a bird's fidgeting. There was something really appealing about the
gay woman of the ground-floor front. He laughed at her description; and
then he remembered regretfully that he had allowed her to forego what
might after all have been for her a pleasant evening because she must
pay for some clothes the woman who was looking after her child. He cou