oursing
through his body, and a great wave of tenderness swept up his hard
resolve as sea-wrack is thrown up after a storm. "She is here; we are
together; why trouble about anything more?" and the time flew by.

But their voices went wrong immediately, and they were soon in
difficulties. Then she laughed, and they began again; but they could not
keep together, and as often as they tried they failed. "Ah, it's not like
the old days!" he thought, and a mood of sadness came over him. He had
begun to observe in Glory the trace of the life she had passed
through--words, phrases, ideas, snatches of slang, touches of moods which
had the note of a slight vulgarity. When the dog took a bone uninvited
she cried: "It's a click; you've sneaked it"; when John broke down in the
singing she told him to "chuck it off the chest"; and when he stopped
altogether she called him glum, and said she would "do it on her own."

"Why does he look so sorrowful?" she thought, and telling herself that
this came to people who were much alone, she rattled on more recklessly
than before.

She talked of the life of the music hall, the life at "the back,"
glorifying it by a tone of apology. It was all hurry-scurry, slap, dash,
and drive; no time to consider effects; a succession of last acts and
first nights; so it was really harder to be a music-hall woman than a
regular actress. And the music-hall woman was no worse than other
women--considering. Had he seen their ballet? It was fetching. Such
pages! Simply darlings! _They_ were the proud young birds of paradise
whom toffs like those Guards came to see, and it was fun to see them
pluming and preening themselves at the back, each for the eyes of her
own particular lord in the stalls. Thus she flung out unfamiliar notes,
hardly knowing their purport, but to John they were as slimy creatures
out of the social mire she had struggled through. O London! London! Its
shadow was over them even there, and go where they would, they could
never escape from it.

His former thought began to hang about him again, and he asked her to
tell him what had happened to her during his absence.

"Shall I?" she said. "Well, I brought three golden sovereigns out of the
hospital to distribute among the people of London, but, bless you, they
went nowhere."

"And what then?"

"Then--then Hope was a good breakfast but a bad supper, you know. But
shall I tell you all? Yes, yes, I will."

She told him of Mrs. Jupe, and of