a perambulator loaded
with bundles of washing. Her first impulse was pity--"Poor little
thing"; but the words were hardly in her mind before they were chased
away by a faint indignation at the child for getting in the tram's way.
Everybody ought to look where they were going. Ev-ry bo-dy ought to look
where they were go-ing, said the pitching tramcar. Ev-ry bo-dy.... Oh,
sickening! Jenny looked at her neighbour's paper--her refuge. "Striking
speech," she read. Whose? What did it matter? Talk, talk.... Why didn't
they do something? What were they to do? The tram pitched to the refrain
of a comic song: "Actions speak louder than words!" That kid who was
wheeling the perambulator full of washing.... Jenny's attention drifted
away like the speech of one who yawns, and she looked again at her
reflection. The girl in the sliding glass wouldn't say much. She'd think
the more. She'd say, when Sir Herbert pressed for his answer, "My
thoughts are my own, Sir Herbert Mainwaring." What was it the girl in
_One of the Best_ said? "You may command an army of soldiers; but you
cannot still the beating of a woman's heart!" Silly fool, she was. Jenny
had felt the tears in her eyes, burning, and her throat very dry, when
the words had been spoken in the play; but Jenny at the theatre and
Jenny here and now were different persons. Different? Why, there were
fifty Jennys. But the shrewd, romantic, honest, true Jenny was behind
them all, not stupid, not sentimental, bold as a lion, destructively
experienced in hardship and endurance, very quick indeed to single out
and wither humbug that was within her range of knowledge, but innocent
as a child before any other sort of humbug whatsoever. That was why she
could now sneer at the stage-heroine, and could play with the mysterious
beauties of her own reflection; but it was why she could also be led
into quick indignation by something read in a newspaper.

Tum-ty tum-ty tum-ty tum, said the tram. There were some more shops.
There were straggling shops and full-blazing rows of shops. There were
stalls along the side of the road, women dancing to an organ outside a
public-house. Shops, shops, houses, houses, houses ... light,
darkness.... Jenny gathered her skirt. This was where she got down. One
glance at the tragic lady of the mirror, one glance at the rising smoke
that went to join the general cloud; and she was upon the iron-shod
stairs of the car and into the greasy roadway. Then darkness, as