s the wanderer in mean streets knew
from her course that this woman had no errand; without emotion the Being
snipped a few minutes from her earthly span.

By the side of the chapel sat an aged woman smothered in rags so many
and so thick that she was passing well clad. She was hunched up on a
camp stool, all string and bits of firewood. A small stove carrying an
iron tray told that her trade was selling roasted chestnuts; nothing
moved in the group; the old woman's face was brown and cracked as her
own chestnuts and there was less life in her than in the warm scent of
the roasting fruits which gratefully filled Victoria's nostrils.

The eight weeks which now separated Victoria from the old days at the
'Rosebud' had driven deeper yet into her soul her unimportance. She was
powerless before the world; indeed, when she thought of it at all, she
no longer likened herself to a cork tossed in the storm, but to a pebble
sunken and motionless in the bed of a flowing river.

Upon the day which followed her sudden uprooting Victoria had bent her
back to the task of finding work. She had known once more the despairing
search through the advertisement columns of the _Daily Telegraph_, the
skilful winnowing of chaff from wheat, sudden and then baffled hopes.
Her new professional sense had taken her to the shops where young women
are wanted to enhance the attraction of coffee and cigarettes. But the
bankruptcy of the 'Rosebud' was not an isolated case. The dishonesty of
Burton was not its cause but its consequence; the ship was sinking under
his feet when he deserted it after loading himself with such booty as he
could carry. Victoria had discovered grimly that the first result of a
commercial crisis is the submerging of those whose labours create a
commercial boom. Within a week of the 'Rosebud' disaster the eleven City
cafes of the 'Lethe, Ltd.' had closed their doors. Two small failures in
the West End were followed by a greater crash. The 'People's
Restaurants, Ltd.', eaten out by the thousand depots of the 'Refreshment
Rendezvous, Ltd.,' had filed a voluntary petition for liquidation; the
official liquidator had at once inaugurated a policy of 'retrenchment
and sound business management,' and, as a beginning, closed two hundred
shops in the City and West End. He proposed to exploit the suburbs, and,
after a triumphant amalgamation with the victorious 'Refreshment
Rendezvous,' to retire from law into peaceful directorships and t