aturday evening, while
leave had obscurely been granted on the Friday. Being master of the
situation the liquidator was re-opening fifty-five of the two hundred
closed shops. The paper announced his boast that 'by ten o'clock on
Monday morning fifty-five P. R. R.'s would be flying the flag of the
scone and cross buns.' The paper also hailed this pronouncement as
Napoleonic.

Victoria feverishly read the list of the rescued depots. They were
mainly in Oxford Street and Bloomsbury. Indeed, one of them was in
Princes Street. A flood of clarity seemed to come over Victoria's brain.
It was impossible for the P. R. or P. R. R. or whatever it had become,
to have secured a staff on the Sunday. No doubt they proposed to engage
it on the spot and to rush the organisation into working order so as to
capture at the outset the _succes de curiosite_ which every London daily
was beating up in the breast of a million idle men and women. Clutching
the paper in her hand she ran across Oxford Street almost under the
wheels of a motor lorry. She turned into Princes Street, and hurled
herself against the familiar door, clutching at the handle.

There was another girl leaning against the door. She was tall and slim.
Her fair hair went to sandiness. Her black coat was dusty and stained.
Her large blue eyes started from her colourless face, pale lipped,
hollow under the cheekbones. Victoria recovered her breath and put her
hair straight feverishly. A short dark girl joined the group, pressing
her body close against them. Then two more. Then, one by one, half a
dozen. Victoria discovered that her boots were undone, and bent down to
do them up with a hairpin. As she struggled with numb fingers her rivals
pressed upon her with silent hostility. As she straightened herself, the
throng suddenly thrust her away from the door. Victoria recovered
herself and drove against them gritting her teeth. The fair girl was
ground against her; but Victoria, full of her pain and bread lust,
thrust her elbow twice into the girl's breast. She felt something like
the rage of battle upon her and its joy as the bone entered the soft
flesh like a weapon.

'Now then, steady girls,' said the voice of the policeman, faint like a
dream voice.

'Blime, ain't they a 'ot lot!' said another dream voice, a loafer's.

The crowd once more became orderly. Though quite a hundred girls had now
collected hardly any spoke. In every face there was tenseness, though
the front ran