f science an' fatal lure of beauty. Top floor
jolly stiff climb when a fellow's all lit up like the Hotel
Doodledum--per arduis ad astra--through labour to the stars--fine motto.
Flying Corps' motto--my motto. Goo' night!"

Off came his hat again and he staggered up the broad stone stairs and
disappeared round a turn. Later they heard his door slam.

"Awful--and yet----"

"And yet?" echoed the doctor.

"I thought he was funny. I nearly laughed. But how terrible! He's so
young and he has had a decent education."

She shook her head sadly.

Presently she took leave of the doctor and made her way upstairs. Three
doors opened from the landing. Numbers 4, 6 and 8.

She glanced a little apprehensively at No. 4 as she passed, but there
was no sound or sign of the reveller, and she passed into No. 6 and
closed the door.

The accommodation consisted of two rooms, a bed-and a sitting-room, a
bath-room and a tiny kitchen. The rent was remarkably low, less than a
quarter of her weekly earnings, and she managed to live comfortably.

She lit the gas-stove and put on the kettle and began to lay the table.
There was a "tin of something" in the diminutive pantry, a small loaf
and a jug of milk, a tomato or two and a bottle of dressing--the high
tea to which she sat down (a little flushed of the face and quite happy)
was seasoned with content. She thought of the doctor and accounted
herself lucky to have so good a friend. He was so sensible, there was no
"nonsense" about him. He never tried to hold her hand as the stupid
buyers did, nor make clumsy attempts to kiss her as one of the partners
had done.

The doctor was different from them all. She could not imagine him
sitting by the side of a girl in a bus pressing her foot with his, or
accosting her in the street with a "Haven't we met before?"

She ate her meal slowly, reading the evening newspaper and dreaming at
intervals. It was dusk when she had finished and she switched on the
electric light. There was a shilling-in-the-slot meter in the bath-room
that acted eccentrically. Sometimes one shilling would supply light for
a week, at other times after two days the lights would flicker
spasmodically and expire.

She remembered that it was a perilous long time since she had bribed the
meter and searched her purse for a shilling. She found that she had
half-crowns, florins and sixpences, but she had no shillings. This, of
course, is the chronic condition of all users of the