ease, blue boiled
potatoes, sandy spinach and blanched ragged bread. There was more beer;
but Jim, his wife proceeded, liked whiskey and water with his meals. The
former glanced uneasily at Mariana, tranquilly cutting up her cutlet.
The diamonds on her narrow, delicate hand flashed, the emerald at her
throat was superb. Their surroundings were doubly depressing contrasted
with her fastidious dress and person. Before her composure Harriet
Polder seemed over-florid; a woman of trite phrases, commonplace,
theatrical attitudes and emotions. As lunch progressed the latter
relapsed into a sulky silence; she glanced surreptitiously at Mariana's
apparel; and consumed cigarettes with a straining assumption of easy
indifference.

Howat Penny was acutely uncomfortable, and Polder scowled at his plate.
The whiskey and water shook in a tense, unsteady hand. He rose from the
table with a violent relief. He proposed almost immediately that they go
over to the Works, and Mariana turned pleasantly to his wife. "Shall you
get a hat?" The other hesitated, then asserted defiantly, "I've always
said I wouldn't go into that rackety place, and I won't now. It's bad
enough to have it tramped back over things." Mariana extended a hand.
"Then good-bye," she proceeded. "I think we won't get back here. We're
tremendously obliged for the lunch. It has been interesting to see where
Jim lives." Harriet Polder's cheeks were darker than pink as they moved
out to the sidewalk. "Jim," she called, with an unmistakably proprietary
sounding of the familiar diminution; "don't forget my cigarettes, and a
half pound of liver for Cherette."

XXXI

James Polder conducted them to the river, sweeping away in a wide curve
beneath solid grey stone bridges into a region of towering hills. They
turned to the left, and, walking on a high embankment, passed blocks of
individually pretentious dwellings, edifices of carved granite,
alternating with the simpler brick faces of an older period. A narrow,
whitely dusty sweep of green park was followed by a speedy degeneration
of the riverside; the houses shrunk to rows of wood marked by the grime
of steel mills. Soon after they reached a forbidding fence; and, passing
a watchman's inspection, entered into a clamorous region of sheds,
tracks and confusing levels such as Howat Penny had viewed from the
train.

"I'm in the open hearth," Polder told them, leading the way over a
narrow boardwalk, still skirting the br