w a well-grown
woman walking with that steady, solid, well-balanced step which I even
then knew indicated fleshy limbs, and a fat backside. She was holding
her petticoats well up out of the dirt, the common habit of even
respectable women then. With gay ladies the habit was to hold them up
just a little higher. I saw a pair of feet in lovely boots which seemed
perfection, and calves which were exquisite. I fired directly. Just
by Beak Street she stopped, and looked into a shop. "Is she gay?" I
thought. "No." I followed on, passed her, then turned round, and met her
eye. She looked at me, but the look was so steady, indifferent, and with
so little of the gay woman in her expression, that I could not make up
my mind as to whether she was accessible or not.

She turned back and went on without looking round. Crossing Tichborne
Street she raised her petticoats higher, it was very muddy there. I then
saw more of both legs, my prick stood at the sight of her limbs, and
settled me. I followed quickly, saying as I came close, "Will you come
with me?" She made no reply, and I fell behind. Soon she stopped
again at a shop, and looked in, and again I said, "May I go with
you?" "Yes,--where to?" "Where you like,---I will follow you." Without
replying a word, and without looking at me, without hurrying, she walked
steadily on till she entered the house No. 13 J...s Street, which I
entered that day for the first time, but many hundreds of times since.
Her composure, and the way she stopped from time to time to look at
the shops as she went along astonished me: she seemed in no hurry, nor
indeed conscious that I was close at her heels, though she knew it.

Inside the house she stopped at the foot of the staircase, and turning
round said in a low tone, "What are you going to give me?" "Ten
shillings." "I won't go upstairs then, so tell you at once." "What
do you want?" "I won't let any one come with me unless they give me a
sovereign at least." "I will give you that." Then she mounted, nothing
more being said. Asking me the question at the foot of the stairs
astonished me, I had been asked it in a room often before, and in the
street; but at the foot of a staircase,--never.

We entered a handsome bed-room. Turning round after paying for it, and
locking the door, I saw her standing with her back to the light (the
curtains were down, but the room was nevertheless light), one arm
resting on the mantle-piece. She looked at me fixedly, an