each shop-front, more engrossing than the last.
Pleasure, like that which touches the soul of a young girl at her first
dance, the souls of men landing on strange shores, touched Margery
Pendyce. A delicious sense of entering the unknown, of braving the
unexpected, and of the power to go on doing this delightfully for ever,
enveloped her with the gay London air of this bright June day. She
passed a perfume shop, and thought she had never smelt anything so nice.
And next door she lingered long looking at some lace; and though she said
to herself, "I must not buy anything; I shall want all my money for poor
George," it made no difference to that sensation of having all things to
her hand.

A list of theatres, concerts, operas confronted her in the next window,
together with the effigies of prominent artistes. She looked at them
with an eagerness that might have seemed absurd to anyone who saw her
standing there. Was there, indeed, all this going on all day and every
day, to be seen and heard for so few shillings? Every year, religiously,
she had visited the opera once, the theatre twice, and no concerts; her
husband did not care for music that was "classical." While she was
standing there a woman begged of her, looking very tired and hot, with a
baby in her arms so shrivelled and so small that it could hardly be seen.
Mrs. Pendyce took out her purse and gave her half a crown, and as she did
so felt a gush of feeling which was almost rage.

'Poor little baby!' she thought. 'There must be thousands like that, and
I know nothing of them!'

She smiled to the woman, who smiled back at her; and a fat Jewish youth
in a shop doorway, seeing them smile, smiled too, as though he found them
charming. Mrs. Pendyce had a feeling that the town was saying pretty
things to her, and this was so strange and pleasant that she could hardly
believe it, for Worsted Skeynes had omitted to say that sort of thing to
her for over thirty years. She looked in the window of a hat shop, and
found pleasure in the sight of herself. The window was kind to her grey
linen, with black velvet knots and guipure, though it was two years old;
but, then, she had only been able to wear it once last summer, owing to
poor Hubert's death. The window was kind, too, to her cheeks, and eyes,
which had that touching brightness, and to the silver-powdered darkness
of her hair. And she thought: 'I don't look so very old!' But her own
hat reflected in the hat-