se with a pretentious portico.

"Our flat's in here. Agnes House, it's called. Come in and have one
before you go home," she invited.

Michael entered willingly. He was glad to show so quickly his confidence
in their new friendship.

Agnes House was only entitled to the distinction of a name rather than a
number, because the rest of the houses in Quondam Street were shabby,
small, and old. It was a new building three stories high, and it was
already falling to pieces, owing to work which must have been
exceptionally dishonest to give so swiftly the effect of caducity. This
collapse was more obvious because it was not dignified by the charm of
age; and Agnes House in its premature dissolution was not much more
admirable than a cardboard box which has been left out in the rain.
Upon Michael it made an impression as of something positively corrupt in
itself apart from any association with depravity: it was like a young
person with a vile disease whose condition nauseated without arousing
pity.

"Rather nice, eh?" said Daisy, as she lit the gas in the kitchen of the
flat. "Sit down. I'll get some whisky. There's a bathroom, you know. And
it's grand being on the ground floor. I should get the hump, if we was
upstairs. I always swore I'd never live in a flat. Well, I don't really
call them safe, do you? Anything might happen and nothing ever be found
out."

Michael as he saw the crude pink sheets of Crime Illustrated strewn
about the room was not surprised that Daisy should often get nervous
when left alone. These horrors in which fashion-plates with mangled
throats lay weltering in pools of blood could scarcely conduce to a
placid loneliness, and Michael knew that she probably spent a great deal
of every day in solitude. Her life with Crime Illustrated to fright her
fancy must always be haunted by presentiments of dread at the sound of a
key in the latch. It was curious, this half childlike existence of the
underworld always upon the boundaries of fear. Michael could see the
villainous paper used for every kind of domestic service--to wrap up a
piece of raw meat, to contain the scraps for the cat's dinner, and
spread half over the kitchen table as a cloth whereon the disks of
grease lay like great thunder-drops. It would be very natural, when the
eyes never rested from these views of sordid violence, to expect evil
everywhere. Himself, as he sat here, was already half inclined to accept
the underworld's preoccupation w