e arc-lamps; and a cold
parching wind had sprung up. Michael deviated from the nearest way to
Leppard Street, and walked on quickly into the heart of Pimlico. This
kind of clear-cut air suited the architecture of the ashen streets. One
after another they stretched before him with their dim checkers of doors
and windows. Sometimes, where they were intersected by wider
thoroughfares, an arc-lamp fizzed above the shape of a solitary
policeman, and the corner-houses stood out sharper and more cadaverous.
And always in contrast with these necropolitan streets, these masks of
human dwellings, were Michael's own thoughts thronged with fancies of
himself and Lily.

It was nearly one o'clock when he walked over the arcuated bridge across
the lake of railway lines and turned the corner into Leppard Street.
From the opposite pavement a woman's figure stepped quickly toward him
out of a circle of lamplight. The sudden shadow lanced across the road
made him start. Perhaps she noticed him jump, for she stopped at once
and stared at him owlishly. He felt sick for a moment, and yet he could
not, from an absurd compassion for her, do as he would have liked and
run.

"Where are you off to in such a hurry?" he heard her say.

It was too late to avoid her now. He only had two sovereigns in his
pocket. It would be ridiculous and cowardly to escape by offering her
one of them. He had given his last silver coin to the match-seller. Yet
it would have been just as cowardly to have offered her that. He pitied
the degradation that prompted her so casual question; the diffidence in
her tones marked the fear of answering brutality which must always haunt
her. Now that she was close to him, he no longer dreaded her. She was
not an ancient drab, a dreadful old woman with black cotton gloves, as
at first he had shuddered to suppose her. If those raddled smears and
that deathly blanch of coarse powder were cleared from her cheeks, there
would be nothing to attract or repel: she would scarcely become even an
individual in the multitude of weary London women.

"Where are you off to, dearie, in such a hurry?" she repeated.

"Home. I'm going home," he said.

"Let's walk a bit of the way together."

He could say nothing to her, and if he hurried on, he would hear her
voice whining after him like a cat in a yard. He did not wish to let her
know where he was living; for every evening he would expect to see her
materialize from a quivering circle of la