; twitchings at her
ankles and wrists, and the hurried beat of her heart shook the whole of
her body. She almost writhed on her bed, up and down, as if forcibly
thrown or goaded.

As the December dawn struggled through her window, diffusing over the
white wall the light of the condemned cell, she could bear it no more.
She got up, washed horrible bitterness from her mouth, clots from her
eyes. Then, swaying with weariness and all her pulses beating, she
strayed into the street, unseeing, her boots unbuttoned, into the daily
struggle.

As the blind man unguided, or the poor on the march, she went into the
East, now palely glowing over the chimney pots. She did not feel her
weariness. Her feet did not belong to her; she felt as if her whole body
were one gigantic wound vaguely aching under the chloroform. She walked
without intention, and as towards no goal. At Oxford Circus she stopped.
Her eye had unconsciously been arrested by the posters which the
newsvendor was deftly glueing down on the pavement. The crude colours of
the posters, red, green, yellow, shocked her sluggish mind into action.
One spoke of a great reverse in Nubia; another repeated the information
and added a football cup draw. A third poster, blazing red, struck such
a blow at Victoria that, for a wild moment, her heart seemed to stop. It
merely bore the words:

P. R.
REOPENS

Victoria read the two lines five or six times, first dully, then in a
whirl of emotion. Her blood seemed to go hot and tingle; the twitchings
of her wrists and ankles grew insistent. With her heart pounding with
excitement she asked for the paper in a choked voice, refusing the
halfpenny change. Backing a step or two she opened the paper. A sheet
dropped into the mud.

The newsvendor, grizzled and sunburnt right into the wrinkles, picked up
the sheet and looked at her wonderingly. From the other side a corpulent
policeman watched her with faint interest, reading her like a book. He
did not need to be told that Victoria was out of work; her face showed
that hope had come into her life.

Victoria read every detail greedily. The enterprising liquidator had
carried through the amalgamation of the People's Restaurants and the
Refreshment Rendezvous, and created the People's Refreshment Rendezvous.
He had done this so quietly and suddenly that the effect was a
thunderbolt. He had forestalled the decision of the Court, so that
agreements had been ready and signed on the S