foreign women opened most of the
doors at which she knocked, whilst surly-looking men hovered in the
background.

Mavis wished she had started earlier for Hammersmith, to see what she
could find there. At last she went into a chemist's shop which she saw
open, to ask if she could be recommended to any rooms. A burly,
blotchy-faced, bearded man stood behind the bottle-laden counter. Mavis
stated her wants.

"Married?" asked the man.

"Y--yes--but I'm living by myself for the present."

"Of course. But your husband would visit you," remarked the man with a
leer.

Mavis looked at him in surprise.

"Well, we'll call it your husband," suggested the chemist.

Mavis walked from the shop.

It seemed that everyone was in league to insult her. Her heart was
heavy with grief. She could not help thinking how the presence of the
loved one, a word of encouragement from him, would instantly dissipate
her soreness of heart and growing physical exhaustion.

She gave up the idea of looking for rooms in this disreputable corner
of London. Her only concern was to get lodging for the night, so that
she could resume her quest on the morrow in a more likely part of the
great city. She stopped a policeman and asked to be directed to a
reasonable hotel. The man told her that she would find what she wanted
in the Euston Road. She walked along this depressing and sordid
thoroughfare, where what were once front gardens before comfortable
houses were now waste spaces, given over to the display of dilapidated
signboards of strange and unfamiliar trades. Here she dragged herself
up the steps of the hotels that abound in this road, to learn at each
one she applied at that they were full for the night. If she had not
been so tired, she would have wondered if they were speaking the truth,
or if they divined her condition and did not consider her to be a
respectable applicant. At the last at which she called, she was asked
to write her name in the hotel book. She commenced to write Mavis
Keeves, but remembered that she had decided to call herself Mrs Kenrick
while in London. She crossed out what she had written, to substitute
the name she had elected to bear. Whether or not this correction made
the hotel people suspicious, she was soon informed that she could not
be accommodated. Mavis, heartsore and weary, went out into the night. A
different class of person to the one that she had met earlier in the
evening began to infest the streets. Bold