onable ruffle, emerging from the closed coat,
produced an _effet mousquetaire_. Lastly she put on her hat; a lapse
from the fashions perhaps, but a lovable, flat, almost crownless, dead
black, save a vertical group of feathers.

Victoria drew her veil down, regretting the thickness of the spots,
pushed it up to repair with a dab of powder the ravage of a pod on the
tip of her nose. She took up her parasol and white gloves, a glow of
excitement already creeping over her as she realised how cleverly she
must have caught the spirit of the profession to look the actress to the
life and yet remain in the note of the demure widow.

Soho Place is neither one of the 'good' streets nor one of the 'bad.'
The police do not pace it in twos and threes in broad daylight, yet they
hardly like to venture into it singly by night. On one side it ends in a
square; on the other it turns off into an unobtrusive side street, the
reputation of which varies yard by yard according to the distance from
the main roads. It is dirty, dingy; yet not without dignity, for its
good Georgian and Victorian houses preserve some solidity and are not
yet of the tenement class. They are still in the grade of office and
shop which is immediately below their one-time status of dwellings for
well-to-do merchants.

Victoria entered Soho Place from the square, so that she was not too ill
impressed. She walked in the middle of the pavement, unconsciously
influenced the foreign flavour of Soho. There men and women stand all
day in the street, talking, bargaining, quarrelling and making love;
when a cab rattles by they move aside lazily, as a Neapolitan stevedore
rolls away on the wharf from the wheels of a passing cart.

Victoria paused for a second on the steps. No 5 Soho Place was a good
house enough. The ground floor was occupied by a firm of auctioneers; a
gentleman describing himself as A.R.I.B.A. exercised his profession on
the third floor; below his plate was nailed a visiting-card similar to
the one Victoria took from her reticule. She went up the staircase
feeling a little braced by the respectability of the house, though she
had caught sight through the area railings of an unspeakably dirty
kitchen where unwashed pots flaunted greasy remains on a liquor stained
deal table. The staircase itself, with its neutral and stained green
distemper, was not over encouraging. Victoria stopped at the first
landing. She had no need to enquire as to the whereabouts