et were full of terrors when pitch dark, or more sinister still in
the pale yellow light of a single gas lamp; the High Street itself,
filled with men and women, most of them shabby, some loudly dressed in
crude colours, shouting, laughing, jostling one another off the footpath
was more terrible, for its joy of life was brutal as the joy of the
pugilist who feels his opponent's teeth crunch under his fist.

At a corner, near a public house blazing with lights, a small crowd
watched two women who were about to fight. They had not come to blows
yet; their duel was purely Homeric. Victoria listened with greedy horror
to the terrible recurrence of half a dozen words.

A child squirmed through the crowd, crying, and caught one of the
fighters by her skirt.

'Leave go . . . I'll rive the guts out 'o yer.'

With a swing of the body the woman sent the child flying into the
gutter. Victoria hurried from the spot. She made towards the West now,
between the gin shops, the barrows under their blazing naphtha lamps.
She was afraid, horribly afraid.

Sitting alone in her attic, her hands crossed before her, questions
intruded upon her. Why all this pain, this violence, by the side of
life's graces? Could it be that one went with the other, indissolubly?
And could it be altered before it was too late, before the earth was
flooded, overwhelmed with pain?

She slipped into bed and drew the horsecloth over her ears. The world
was best shut out.

CHAPTER XXII

THOMAS FARWELL collected three volumes from his desk, two pamphlets and
a banana. It was six o'clock and, the partners having left, he was his
own master half an hour earlier than usual.

'You off?' said the junior from the other end of the desk.

'Yes. Half an hour to the good.'

'What's the good of half an hour,' said the youth superciliously.

'No good unless you think it is, like everything else,' said Farwell.
'Besides, I may be run over by half past six.'

'Cheerful as ever,' remarked the junior, bending his head down to the
petty cash balance.

Farwell took no notice of him. Ten times a day he cursed himself for
wasting words upon this troglodyte. He was a youth long as a day's
starvation, with a bulbous forehead, stooping narrow shoulders and
narrow lips; his shape resembled that of an old potato. He peered
through his glasses with watery eyes hardly darker than his grey face.

'Good night,' said Farwell curtly.

'Cheer, oh!' said the junior.

F