-eyed women, dressed in cheap
finery, appeared here and there, either singly or in pairs. The vague,
yet familiar fear, which she had experienced when she began to look for
rooms, again took possession of her with gradually increasing force.
She was soon on such familiar terms with this obsession, that she
remembered when and how it had first originated in her mind. It was
after her adventure with Mrs Hamilton and her chance meeting with the
never-to-be-forgotten Mrs Ewer, when a horrid fear of London had
possessed her soul. Now she saw, even plainer than before, the deep
pitfalls and foul morasses which ever menace the feet of unprotected
girls in London who have to earn their daily bread. If it were an
effort for her to snatch a living from the great industrial machine
when she was last in London, now, in her condition, it was practically
hopeless to look for work. Mind and body were paralysed by a great
fear. To add to her discomfiture, the rain again began to fall.
Scarcely knowing what she was doing, she walked up a pathway, running
parallel with the road, which flanked a row of forlorn-looking houses.
Here she felt so faint that she was compelled to cling to the railings
to save herself from falling. Two children passed, one of whom carried
a jug, who stopped to stare at her.

"Please!" called Mavis weakly, at which one of the children approached
her.

"Can you tell me where I can get a room?"

"I'll ask fader," replied the child, who spoke with a German accent.

Mavis remembered little beyond waiting an eternity of suspense, and
then of being assisted into a house, up a flight of stairs to a room
where she sank on the nearest thing handy. She opened her frock to
clutch, as if for protection, the ring Perigal had given her, and which
she always wore suspended on her heart. Then she was overtaken by
unconsciousness.

When she awoke, she rubbed her eyes again and again, whilst a horrible
pungent smell affected her nostrils. She could scarcely believe that
she had got to where she found herself. She saw by the morning light,
which was feebly straggling into the room, that she was lying, fully
dressed, on an untidy, dirty bed. The room looked so abjectly wretched
that she sprang from her resting-place and attempted to draw the
curtains, in order to take complete stock of her
surroundings--attempted, because the dark, cheap cretonne, of which
they were made, refused to move, their tops being nailed to the upper