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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
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