entered the
Tottenham Court Road by the Oxford Street end.

There the omnibuses stopped. A conductor shouted for fares, with the light
of the public-house lamps on his open mouth. There was smell of mud, of
damp clothes, of bad tobacco, and where the lights of the costermongers'
barrows broke across the footway the picture was of a group of three
coarse, loud-voiced girls, followed by boys. There were fish shops, cheap
Italian restaurants, and the long lines of low houses vanished in crapulent
night. The characteristics of the Tottenham Court Road impressed themselves
on Hubert's mind, and he thought how he would have to bear for at least
three weeks with all the grime of its poverty. It would take about that
time to finish his play, and the neighbourhood would suit his purpose
excellently well. So long as he did not pass beyond it he ran little risk
of discovery, and to secure himself against friends and foes he penetrated
farther northward, not stopping till he reached the confines of Holloway.

Then a little dim street caught his eye, and he knocked at the door of the
first house exhibiting a card in the parlour window. But they did not let
their bedroom under seven shillings, and this seemed to Hubert to be an
extravagant price. He tried farther on, and at last found a clean room for
six shillings. Having no luggage, he paid a week's rent in advance, and the
landlady promised to get him a small table, on which he could write, a
small table that would fit in somewhere near the window. She asked him when
he would like to be called, and put the candlestick on the chair. Hubert
looked round the room, and a moment sufficed to complete the survey. It was
about seven feet long. The lower half of the window was curtained by a
piece of muslin hardly bigger than a good-sized pocket-handkerchief; to do
anything in this room except to lie in bed seemed difficult, and Hubert sat
down on the bed and emptied out his pockets. He had just four pounds, and
the calculation how long he could live on such a sum took him some time.
His breakfast, whether he had it at home or in the coffee-house, would cost
him at least fourpence. He thought he would be able to obtain a fairly good
dinner in one of the little Italian restaurants for ninepence. His tea
would cost the same as his breakfast. To these sums he must add twopence
for tobacco and a penny for an evening paper--impossible to do without
tobacco, and he must know what was going on in