assed by her into the oyster shop, smoking a
pipe. She felt she would never dare to sit in a room where strange men
smoked pipes. Thus she stood for a moment forlorn on the pavement, until
a memory of the only decent grill in town, according to Bobby, passed
through her mind.

A policeman sent her by bus to the New Gaiety, patronised by Bobby and
his cronies. As Victoria went down the interminable underground
staircase, and especially as she entered the enormous room where paper,
carpets, and plate always seem new, her courage almost failed her.
Indeed she looked round anxiously, half hoping that the anonymous Bobby
might be revisiting his old haunts. But she was quite alone, and it was
only by reminding herself that she must always be alone at meals now
that she coerced herself into sitting down. She got through her meal
with expedition. She felt frightfully small; the waiters were painfully
courteous; a man laid aside his orange coloured newspaper, and
embarrassed her with frequent side glances. She braced herself up
however. 'I am training,' was her uppermost thought. She then wondered
whether she ought to have come to the New Gaiety at all. Fortunately it
was only at the very end of her lunch that Victoria realised she was the
only woman sitting alone. After this discovery her nerve failed her. She
got up hurriedly, and, in her confusion, omitted to tip the waiter. At
the desk the last stone was heaped on the cairn of her discomfiture when
the cashier politely returned to her a quarter rupee which she had given
her thinking it was a sixpence.

With a sigh of satisfaction Victoria resumed her walk through London.
She was a little tired already but she could think of nothing to do,
nowhere to go to. She did not want to return to Curran's to sit in her
box-like room, or to look at the two spinsters availing themselves of
their holiday in town to play patience in the conservatory.

All the afternoon, therefore, Victoria saw the sights. Covent Garden
repelled her by the massiveness of its food suggestion, and especially
by the choking dirt of its lanes. After Covent Garden, Savoy court yard
and its announcements of intellectual plays by unknown women. Then once
more, drawn by its spaciousness guessed at through Spring Gardens,
Victoria walked into Saint James's Park. She rested awhile upon a seat,
watching the waterfowl strut and plume themselves, the pelicans flounder
heavily in the mud. She was tired. The sun was set