will go to an hotel, I suppose?"

I answered that I should have to look for something less expensive.

"In that case," she said, "I think I know something that will suit you
exactly."

It was a quiet boarding establishment in Bloomsbury--comfortable house,
reasonable terms, and, above all, perfectly respectable. In fact, it was
kept by her own sister, and if I liked she would take me along in her
cab and drop me at the door. Should she?

Looking back at that moment I cannot but wonder that after what I had
heard I did not fear discovery. But during the silence of the last hour
I had been feeling more than ever weak and helpless, so that when my
companion offered me a shelter in that great, noisy, bewildering city in
which I had intended to hide myself, but now feared I might be submerged
and lost, with a willing if not a cheerful heart I accepted.

Half an hour afterwards our cab drew up in a street off Russell Square
at a rather grimy-looking house which stood at the corner of another and
smaller square that was shut off by an iron railing.

The door was opened by a young waiter of sixteen or seventeen years,
who was wearing a greasy dress-suit and a soiled shirt front.

My companion pushed into the hall, I followed her, and almost at the
same moment a still larger and perhaps grosser woman than my friend,
with the same features and complexion, came out of a room to the left
with, a serviette in her hand.

"Sophie!"

"Jane!" cried my companion, and pointing to me she said:

"I've brought you a new boarder."

Then followed a rapid account of where she had met me, who and what I
was, and why I had come up to London.

"I've promised you'll take her in and not charge her too much, you
know."

"Why, no, certainly not," said the sister.

At the next moment the boy waiter was bringing, my trunk into the house
on his shoulder and my travelling companion was bidding me good-bye and
saying she would look me up later.

When the door was closed I found the house full of the smell of hot
food, chiefly roast beef and green vegetables, and I could hear the
clink of knives and forks and the clatter of dishes in the room the
landlady had come from.

"You'd like to go up to your bedroom at once, wouldn't you?" she said.

We went up two flights of stairs covered with rather dirty druggeting,
along a corridor that had a thin strip of linoleum, and finally up a
third flight that was bare to the boards, until we came t